I will argue that one class of issues in computer ethics often associated with privacy and a putative right to privacy is best-analyzed in terms that make no substantive reference to privacy at all. These issues concern the way that networked information technology creates new ways in which conventional rights to personal security can be threatened. However one chooses to analyze rights, rights to secure person and property will be among the most basic, the least controversial, and the most universally recognized. A risk-based approach to these issues provides a clearer statement of what is ethically important, as well as what is ethically problematic. Once the issues of security have been articulated clearly, it becomes possible to make out genuine issues of privacy in contrast to them. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
