"It is not feasible to draft coherent and informed laws prtecting a right or to fully understand existing laws, unless the parameters of the right and its importance have been established. A uniform and well-grounded approach to privacy will not be developed until law-makers understand the essential nature of the right and where it ranks in relation to other interests which privacy has the potential to encroach upon or curtail. At the outset it is important to emphasise that there is a cost attached to entrenching a legal right to privacy. If there were no legal protection for privacy, criminals and terrorists would find it harder to plot harmful acts; we would know more about the “real” agendas that drive our politicians; we would all know our neighbours better and the fear caused by not knowing what others are doing would alrgely dissipate. In the business setting, people would be better placed to make rational and informed investment and spending decisions. More generally, the world would be a far more open and less pretentious place. It is true that I order to reap these benefits we would have to give something up: a little (or perhaps even a lot of) information about us. But is this too high aprice to pay? As we shall see in Chapter 2, it could be claimed that the right to privacy is no more than a “polite” way of entrenching the concept of secrecy, which is normally antithetic to an open and free society."