Privacy as Invisibility (by Default): Bridging the Gap between Anarcho-Capitalists and Cypherpunks

This article argues that privacy (here defined as invisibility by default) is one of the best weapons to defend property rights. Privacy cannot be owned, but it is necessary to preserve property. Physical and tangible objects behave differently from information, ideas, and data with regard to property and privacy: while ownership of the latter is lost as soon as adversaries see them, this is not the case for the former. In both cases, however, making property invisible is crucial to keeping it safe. Ultimately, privacy is the ability to make property invisible by default to enemies and visible by choice to trusted peers.