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In Daniel Solove’s new book Understanding Privacy, he introduces his analysis with a litany of quotes from scholars making the point that privacy, as a concept, is “in disarray” and attempts to divine its “essential’ meaning, very problematic. Here are few:

Privacy is “is difficult to define because it is exasperatingly vague and evanescent” – Arthur Miller

“Privacy proves to be the Chesire Cat of values: not much substance but a very winning smile.” – Jonathan Franzen

Privacy is in a state of “chaos”. – Julie Inness

“The concept of privacy is infected with pernicious ambiguities.” – Hyman Gross

“Attempts to define privacy have generally not met with any success.” – Colin Bennett

“Privacy is a value so complex, so entangled in competing and contradictory dimensions, so engorged with various and distinct meanings, that I sometimes despair whether is can be usefully addressed at all.” – Robert Post

“Privacy, it seems, is not simply dead. It is dying over and over again.” Deborah Nelson

Solove concludes from this opening salvo that “(i)t seems as though everbody is talking about ‘privacy,’ but it is not clear exactly what they are taliking about.”