Abstract
Digitization has not changed the ways in which we can invade another’s privacy: intrusion, disclosure, false light, and appropriation still cover the range of possible invasions. But because of digitization, invasions of privacy have become more penetrating, pervasive, and prevalent. What we have lost is nothing different in kind than what was lost before when we only had to worry about eavesdropping and peeping Toms, but by explaining how digitization has affected the privacy torts, we gain a better understanding of a moral harm that underlies all invasions of privacy—being treated as an object to be viewed, used, and manipulated.
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Notes
- 1.
Digitization has also made other kinds of harm more prevalent and pervasive—and inexpensive. The radio device used to hack into VW’s locks—for at least 100 million vehicles—costs $40, money well-spent for thieves still interested in stealing a VW (Greenberg 2016b).
- 2.
To use Donald Trump’s expression (Bump 2016).
- 3.
GPS Tracker, by Cellphone Solutions, LLC, downloadable from iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gps-tracker-phone-location/id453761271?mt=8. “Over 2,500,000 downloads!”
- 4.
See also Englehardt and Narayanan (2016). A “stealth installation” occurs via wifi in, say, a Starbucks where everyone is using the same, open wifi. An installer simply fastens onto the wifi, tracking it back to your digital device, as it were, to install whatever malware is needed for the job at hand.
- 5.
See also The Center for Digital Democracy (2016). This second article has a link to the complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission, providing more detail about Cayla and another toy, I-Que Intelligent Robot.
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Robison, W.L. (2018). Digitizing Privacy. In: Cudd, A., Navin, M. (eds) Core Concepts and Contemporary Issues in Privacy. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74639-5_13
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