Freedom of Information and Privacy

This chapter addresses the status of the right of access to information from the government and the conflicting right of citizens to control private information about themselves. The concepts of the "right to know" and the "right to privacy," each with its many facets, have developed separately in the law, largely without any common anchor in the Constitution. The right to privacy also embraces many different concepts: the right to make fundamental decisions, freedom from intrusion or observation in one&s;s private affairs, and the right to maintain personal control over certain information about oneself. Complementary as the right to know and the right to privacy are, there is an inherent conflict between them. In applying certain guarantees of the Bill of Rights the Court has explained their purposes sufficiently broadly in terms of privacy that an independent concept of privacy, greater than the sum of its parts, has taken root.