Consumer Alert appreciates the opportunity to comment on privacy issues relating to the Internet. Our comments on privacy are based on these principles. However, privacy is also an ambiguous term, as Judge Richard A. Posner in his book The Economics of Justice points out.
Privacy means different things to different people in different situations and at different times.
Palmer observed that the right to shut the door to one's house and thereby protect one's interest in privacy, is being transformed to a right to control information itself. But since information is in the minds and behavior of others, such a right to the information itself is a right to control other people. Privacy proponents advocate a right by some to stop others from engaging in peaceful commerce, the purely voluntary making of offers and acceptances. However, they have failed to make any comparisons between the Internet and other public communication media or transactions that do not assure anonymity. Because nearly everything a person does reveals some information to a stranger, it does not follow that being online grants the user any special privacy rights.