Privacy is a concept, a value, and a right that is hugely important but its meaning and significance is fraught and widely contested. As we share more and more of our personal information and data for the benefits of public safety, personal conveniences, and connectivity, we need to, now more than ever, ask ourselves: what does privacy mean and why does it matter?

In his seminal work ‘On Liberty’, English philosopher John Stuart Mill, explores the nature and limits of the power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual. Mill maintains that freedom of expression and thought are fundamental to individual liberty and sovereignty and, therefore, to the wellbeing of society. He believes these freedoms offer safeguards against all forms of tyranny — from tyranny of authoritarian despots to the tyranny of the majority. 

“Increased interoperability—and decreased corporate power—opens policy space for real privacy remedies, ones that treat technology users as citizens with rights, not merely as consumers who can make purchase-decisions.”

Does the internet have to be ‘five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four?’ 

In her famous and important work, the Origins of Totalitarianism, the German-born American political theorist and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, explores the foundation and evolution of totalitarianism in the 20th century through an analysis of two major totalitarian political movements, Nazism and Stalinism. 

Plato’s Republic explores the question: Is it always better to be just than unjust? To answer this question the book takes on the form of a dialogue between Socrates and various members of the public who question the motivation behind just actions. They discuss what makes a good and thereby a just city and ask how we can define justice as a virtue of human being.