Privacy and autonomy. Control over information as an essential modulator for autonomy

Contemporary debates about privacy are dichotomous: the public realm versus your private realm. This dichotomy harms the debate because it doesn’t do justice to the social embeddedness of persons in multiple and diverse social spheres.. In order to grasp how a person can be free in a social context we must look at the role of information in our contemporary information intensive society. This means the person must realise which information is relevant in which context. Information can be used to create and break current and potential relational ties which in turn affect social freedom. Additional complexity is introduced by the way information is disseminated time and location independently by modern information technology. A social view on privacy and its informational component provides insight for the agent on how to use information as his social currency: when and where to spend it in order to maximise social freedom.