Most respectfully, I believe that
dizzy has posed the question incorrectly. I suggest that it would more correctly reflect the way things are, especially in the United States, to say,
Why does a human person have less right to privacy, and less access to information, than a corporate person--a corporation?
In the battles over the internet, which are only extensions of battles outside of cyberspace, we see the struggle of ebusiness over the information superhighway. We see copyright and patent being used to the benefit of corporations, not for people.
If there is a constitutional right to political speech, for those that can afford it; if there is a constitutional right to business for business, and not to be prevented from carrying out business by business--as internationally codified in free trade agreements--then what TheLady describes as theft, may not be!
What we are permitted to have as a personal space, an area of privacy around ourselves, is only what the powers that be permit. If it makes them money not to permit it, or only to permit it with payment, say a license to privacy, that's the way it will be.
Look at the battles over intellectual property. What was once thought to be a balance between the interest of the individual creator to receive the just reward for his or her creation, and the interest of the individual human person--member of the public--to have free use of the work to enjoy, to build upon and contribute to the commonweal, is now out of kilter.
And it is no longer a balance between human persons, but between the corporate person, the company, and the individual human person.
Without a right to privacy, we cannot be, and become the persons we are destined. It is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
I fear that all too soon, the rights that were envisioned to inhere in human persons, will be vested in corporations. When that is fixed, if ever, then the correct balance between freedom of information, more often thought of as intellectual property, and not personal information, and personal privacy, will right itself.
see also Blues and Copyright, The Threat to the Internet is Not the Government,The INTERNET is Liberal -- O, and so is Everything