Not much will be gained from discussing privacy and its legal regulation in the abstract. Perhaps the need for privacy is an aspect of human nature (Moore, 1984, p. 59ff.) but the form this need takes and the way that law may be used to protect this interest are neither given by nature nor likely to be interestingly the same throughout history. When considering our understandings of privacy and its appropriate regulation we are of course contemplating the world made by us, the social rather than the natural world.