Privacy (personvern)¶
Basis
The page builds on the source cards and searches in the source texts. Only sources that define or use the concept in a meaningful way are included. The secondary sources mostly use privacy or data protection.
Definitions in the sources¶
| Source | Definition/use | Page | U/T |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solove 2011 | A plurality of problems without a single essence; cannot be reduced to secrecy | 24, 27 | U |
| Solove 2011 | A societal value, not just an individual one | 47, 50 | U |
| Fairfield & Engel 2015 | A public good in the strict economic sense; lack of privacy is a public bad | 423 | U |
| Fairfield & Engel 2015 | The group, not the individual, is the relevant unit | 456 | U |
| Bauman et al. 2014 | The right to privacy is the overarching human right; the state's duty to protect personal data derives from it | 131–132 | U |
| Steiger 2019 | A human right that also protects personal data, and is linked to democracy | 79, 88 | U |
| Hankey et al. 2018 | Data rights are ‘the next generation of human rights’, a new expression of the right to privacy | 43 | U |
| Alegre 2021 | A ‘gateway right’ to freedom of thought; unlike it, privacy can be limited | 4, 8 | U |
| Cloos et al. 2019 | A fundamental human right, but also something subjective with a value that can be measured in money | 1–3 | U |
| Vedder & Naudts 2017 | A fundamental right with principles such as fairness, transparency and accountability; does not reach far enough with algorithms | 211, 219 | U |
| Abiteboul & Stoyanovich 2019 | The GDPR's data subject rights: insight into and control over one's own personal data | 2 | U |
| Richardson et al. 2019 | Both individual protection and protection of public discourse and democratic participation; asks whether group privacy is needed | 4–5, 14 | U |
| Ruckenstein & Granroth 2020 | Something violated when surveillance crosses the boundaries of personal autonomy; informants want contradictory things | 12–13, 15 | U |
Where usage diverges¶
- Individual or collective? Abiteboul & Stoyanovich describe the GDPR as aimed at the individual data subject (p. 2) [U]. Solove, Fairfield & Engel and Vedder & Naudts argue that privacy cannot be understood only individually (Solove 2011, p. 47; Fairfield & Engel 2015, p. 456; Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 218) [U]. They justify this differently: with pragmatism, economic theory and the group effects of algorithms [T].
- Right or commodity? Most sources treat privacy as a right, while Cloos et al. measure the price people demand for disclosing information (pp. 1–3) [U]. Hankey et al. argue that arguments based only on the monetary value of data miss the mark (p. 43) [U].
- Part of something larger? Alegre sees privacy as a gateway to freedom of thought (p. 8) [U]. Steiger and Hankey et al. link it to democracy (Steiger 2019, pp. 78–79; Hankey et al. 2018, p. 43) [U]. Bauman et al. argue the debate cannot be limited to ‘surveillance versus privacy’ (p. 121) [U].
Concepts easily confused with this one¶
- Privacy and data protection: Bauman et al. distinguish the right to privacy from the protection of personal data (pp. 131–132) [U]. NOU 2022:11 makes a similar distinction between personvern and personopplysningsvern (p. 30) [U]. The distinction matters for translating between Norwegian and English in the thesis [T].
- Privacy and secrecy: Solove writes that the nothing-to-hide argument confuses the two (p. 27) [U].
- Privacy and public good: see public good. The word ‘good’ is used in several ways in the sources [T].
How the concept is used in the primary documents¶
- NOU 2022:11:
- Personvern is defined starting from the individual's inviolability, integrity and private life (p. 29) [U].
- The commission adopts Schartum's understanding of private spheres (p. 29) [U].
- It distinguishes between personvern and personopplysningsvern, but uses personvern for both (p. 30) [U].
- Privacy is both an individual right and a collective societal good (pp. 9–10, 31) [U], and ‘a shared responsibility’ (p. 11) [U].
- FFI report: privacy is not defined, but is treated as a framework for the researchers' own data collection, through the Personal Data Act and a data processing agreement (Sivertsen et al. 2026, p. 20) [U].
Open questions for Rebekka¶
- Which working definition of privacy do you use in the thesis?
- Do you translate personvern as privacy, data protection or both, given the NOU's distinction (p. 30)?
- Which of the understandings above do you recognise in the primary documents, and which are missing?