Speech and privacy

““Freedom of speech” is indeed very important, but it seems to me there are serious moral issues concerning making details of other people’s lives public. (I talked about this a few years back in a journal paper on philosophical autobiography.) Imagine a former friend or lover becomes famous and writes about you in their autobiography. Your life has been made public, from one biased perspective, without your permission. Nor are you in any position to strike back, unless there are demonstrable inaccuracies in the account. If there is no public interest (as opposed to public curiosity) in your life being made exposed, what justification is there for doing so, and what harm to liberty has been caused by preventing such revelations?
Many advocates of freedom of speech say, well, that’s tough. It’s the price you pay for free expression. But, despite claims to the contrary, free speech is not indivisible. Indeed, we recognise that it isn’t by banning inflammatory speech and other such speech acts.” Julian Baggini, “Does privacy trump free expression?”