A right to privacy?

In an examination of so-called "smart meters," Wendy Kaminer brought up the question of privacy:

Our traditional definition of privacy is that what happens under one's clothes, inside sealed envelopes placed in the mail, and behind the drawn shades of one's home is one's own private business. The idea of a home as a castle protected by a sort of legal moat is why government needs search warrants and due cause to cross any of those barriers. However, technology has broken down those physical barriers so that scanners can see under one's clothes; Google--never mind the government--can read my naked emails; and wires shuttling information penetrate the walls of the house, rendering them porous. ... Ultimately, we need a better legal and philosophical concept of what privacy means when barriers are porous and the invader is not the government.

My political consciousness of privacy, the one I developed as an adult, is all about what the government is and is not allowed to know about me. Is there an implicit right to privacy in the Bill of Rights? Where must the balance be struck between my right to privacy, if it exists, and the greater good of society? If a person's privacy exists only within specific domains, what are they? And so on.

At the same time, I've concluded, reluctantly, that with respect to anyone else, I have only the rights they consent to give me. No one holds a gun to my head when I sign up for a bank account or wireless phone service or an airline ticket. In principle I can choose not to do business with these people. What they do with the information I give them is up to them.

That, frankly, stinks.

A plausible argument can be made that no right to privacy is set forth in the Constitution or any of its amendments. I argue that it damned well should be, and it should apply not merely to government but to "persons," which would include not only flesh-and-blood human beings but corporate entities as well.

I've been a lot bolder in the last decade or so asking customer-service representatives if the information I'm forced to provide to do business with their companies is shared. I've been encouraged that more and more of them have replied that they do not and will not share that information. I'm discouraged, though, that some of them are legally free to ignore my wishes.

I'm not asking for what small-government advocates would call "onerous government regulation." I'm asking for the right to exclude myself from giant private databases that correlate my address, phone number(s), age, spending habits, and political persuasions, among other things. Part of government's job, after all, is to provide for the well-being of its citizens. Does the duplicitous "charity" Smile Train's right to acquire names for its solicitation database trump my right to be free of its ridiculously wasteful and exceedingly irritating entreaties? (I say "duplicitous" because Smile Train ignores requests to be removed from its mailing lists. I've tried. Don't give it a penny.)

I'm sure I'm not the first to have this idea, and I'm also sure these aren't the deepest or most considered thoughts on the subject. I'll be looking around the Web for more information, and following up if I find anything worth mentioning.