Right to Information Identity

Elad Oreg, Ono Academic College, Israel

Abstract

Inspired by the famous Warren&Brandeis conceptualization of the "right to privacy", this article tries to answer a modern conceptual lacuna and present the argument for the need to conceptualize and recognize a new, independent legal principle of a "right to information-identity". This is the right of an individual to the functionality of the information platforms that enable others to identify and know him and to remember who and what he is. Changes in technology and social standards make the very notion of identity increasingly fluid, transforming the way it is treated and opening new and fascinating ways of relating to it. Simultaneously, they intensify the dangers threatening it. The tremendous extent of distortion, impersonation, filtering, deleting and concealing of information-identity, demands a legal response grounded in solid conceptual and normative foundations. However, contemporary legal protection for the existence of information-identity is partial and insufficient and provided incidentally by a variety of legal doctrines, lacking any consolidated conceptual and normative foundations