by Daniel Troit

Created on: February 03, 2009   Last Updated: February 26, 2009

When addressing liberty, we mean to discuss the nature of an individual's freedom and to what extent that freedom should be allowed. Individualist thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson believed that a person's freedom was afforded by nature and not by any allowance of a government or "magistrate". In allowing liberty to become the law of a province or state, a people acknowledge that the only limits upon one individual's freedom would be those that inhibited one's ability to trespass upon the freedom of another individual. The example is often given that in a libertarian society, "your right to swing your fist ends where by nose begins". The only actions prohibited by common law are those that inhibit the free action of another.

Rights exist as a means to protect the liberty of one individual or group against another. By stating that one has a right such as freedom of speech, a people agree that an inhibition of an individual's free expression is unjustified and detrimental to the principle of liberty. Your right to tell me to shut up ends when you try to forcibly close my mouth. By reaching a common agreement as to what individual liberties exist, a population not only guarantees an individual's right to partake in certain actions, but denies their right to restrain the actions of another. Rights not only tell us what we may do ourselves, but what we may not do to each other.

The right to privacy comes into question when it is asked where the privledge to be informed of the affairs of the community ends and the right to live without fear of scrutiny begins. In a society concerned with and dedicated to liberty, the nature of an individual's affairs remains the exclusive privilege of the individual as far as they affect only themselves. Once an individual's influence enters the sphere of another's, the details of those actions become equally the privilege of both the person taking the action and those whom they are executing the action with or against. In short, solely those whom it affects hold the right to information.

It is believed by a society pursuing liberty that a requirement for transparency or explanation of an individual's undertakings by those whom it doesn't concern inhibits one's pursuit of happiness and freedom. By this standard, the right to privacy extends to every corner of an individual's life insofar as it affects only them. The right to privacy is therefore thought to protect the liberty of a nation. When persons are selected to act as representatives of a population, the nature and details of actions taken on behalf of the population are once again both the privilege of the representative and the population. By this measure, a government body or official has a right to privacy in only as much capacity as they are acting in a personal interest. The right of a government agent or agency to remain private about the workings of their personal life shall remain unconfined. The actions taken as a representative of the people, however, would have to be equally available to all constituents in order to maintain liberty.

In the simplest of terms, the right to privacy is not only a consequent luxury of liberty but also a fundamental component in its nature. Privacy as a guaranteed freedom is meant to preempt any limitations on an individual's private actions by public scrutiny. The limits of a person's right to privacy are limited by the nature of their actions. Private affairs merit private information while public affairs require public knowledge. As far as an individual is willing to limit their influence, so shall a society limit its demand for disclosure. Only with such a definition is privacy able to maintain it's inherent link to liberty.

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