Anita Allen | Privacy Through the Lenses of Race and Gender

There is increasing interest in understanding the different impact race and gender have on the enjoyment of privacy and data protection rights. On International Women’s Day, Anita L. Allen will discuss privacy through the lenses of race and gender, values and rights. Although privacy should be considered a foundational good and can represent social power – as well as a tool to resist power – the story of privacy for groups on the margins has been a lack of privacy protection, or too much of the wrong kinds of privacy.

Privacy is a crucial tool in the freedom-lover's kit for a successful life and an indispensable shield to protect the most vulnerable from excessive control and oversight. Nations should be committed to protecting privacy for all people, whether they eagerly embrace privacy or not. But we need to ask: Who is watched and who is to be observed? Who is profiled and who is ignored? Who gets to be invisible or is forced into invisibility? What are the implications of our demands for justice? Are we all equal in relation to privacy, and does the state care equally for everybody’s privacy?