In his Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, Adam Moore has taken on the ambitious challenge of offering readers nothing less than “a philosophical defense for privacy rights.” An associate professor of philosophy at the University of Washington, Moore offers an analysis that should be of interest to scholars and students in a variety of academic disciplines as well as to participants in the public policy arena.

As the author explains in his acknowledgments, the majority of his book is adapted from previously published articles or professional papers. This is both a plus and a minus. The obvious benefit of this strategy is that many of the ideas he presents have already been subjected to peer scrutiny and review. A drawback, however, is that the author's chain of reasoning is occasionally beset with gaps, redundancies, and a distracting number of references to previous or forthcoming chapters.

Moore's basic position is that privacy is not philosophically derivative of other rights—such as life, liberty, or property—but that it stands on its own two feet. After ranging across the centuries and critiquing justifications for privacy rights advanced by such disparate thinkers as Aristotle, John Locke, David Hume, John Rawls, David Gauthier, William Parent, and Judith Jarvis Thompson, the author posits his own definition of privacy: “A privacy right is an access control right over oneself and information about oneself. Privacy rights also include a use or control feature—that is, privacy rights allow me exclusive use and control over personal information and specific bodies or locations” (16). According to this definition, privacy is an individual's right to control access to his or her body, to secure tangible possessions from theft or alteration, and to determine what use others may make of personal information such as medical or financial data. Moore believes that most modern societies do a better job of protecting what he terms “locational privacy” (control over one's body and one's possessions) than “informational privacy” (the mainly digital data concerning our medical and financial situations).

In examining the grounding for both types of privacy in the first half of his book, Moore does his best to explain complex concepts and logical contingencies. Frequently he personalizes his analysis with examples involving two fictional characters: “Fred” and “Ginger.” Either the author is a 1930s film buff or he is a ballroom dancing aficionado. Most of the time, the antics of Fred and Ginger enliven Moore's prose. Occasionally, however, Fred and Ginger miss a few steps or appear to sit out some difficult paragraphs. In those instances, the diction ends up jargon ridden or simply opaque. Take this sentence from Moore's third chapter: “Eudaimonism is the view that flourishing or well-being is valuable and nonflourishing disvaluable” (40). Even Fred and Ginger would have been hard pressed to trip through this passage with their quintessential rhythm.

For this reviewer—a constitutional historian and student of public policy—Privacy Rights becomes especially interesting beginning with chapter 6, “Strengthening Legal Privacy Rights.” Here, Moore examines some of the major American court decisions and statutes touching on privacy. Knowledgeable readers will recognize such constitutional mainstays as Olmstead v. U.S. (1928), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), the USA Patriot Act (2001), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Perhaps the most interesting feature of this chapter is the argument that Moore presents for “resurrecting the tort of intrusion” (122–28) as a means of creating a civil remedy for individuals who feel that personal information has been illegally scanned or appropriated. Moore believes that the public's right to know, protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, should not trump the right of an individual to shield private information from officious government agents, self-appointed hackers, or inquisitive journalists. Moore expands on this thesis in the following chapter, “Privacy, Speech and the Law.” Essentially, Moore believes that the First Amendment's protection of free expression is not compromised by placing restrictions on access or disclosure of personal information, even for so-called public figures. Some civil libertarians may disagree with the author's position, but Moore's argument deserves their full attention.

Moore's final three chapters continue in an advocacy mode. Chapter 8, “Drug Testing and Privacy in the Workplace,” presents a closely argued, heavily documented, and—in my view—persuasive case for abandoning mandatory drug testing on the job. Moore maintains that most employee drug use is not, in fact, particularly dangerous or a drain on productivity. Instead of systematic or random drug testing, which he argues is expensive and frequently inaccurate, not to mention an assault on privacy, Moore advocates a less invasive “agility” or “performance-based” testing. Chapter 9, “Evaluating Free Access Arguments: Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Hacking,” debunks the views that those who have grown up with computers, the aptly named “digital natives,” have recently advanced in favor of computer hacking. Moore ends up championing intellectual property rights in the face of hackers' arguments by falling back on the two-centuries-old reasoning of John Locke that the protection of intellectual property rights “promotes incentives necessary for progress” (187–88). In his final chapter, “Privacy, Security and Public Accountability,” the author surveys several instances of governmental surveillance and intrusion into private matters. Although he concludes that most governmental scrutiny of the lives and digital records of individuals is not philosophically defensible, he nevertheless advocates the protection of the government's own classified data by means of powerful encryption tools.

Philosophers and other scholars may not, in the end, agree that Moore has achieved his announced purpose of mounting a rigorous philosophical justification for the protean concept of privacy. But all readers—and potential readers—of Privacy Rights should applaud the contribution that the author has made to the hybrid literature on privacy, and his imaginative philosophical justifications for particular public policy positions.