Sticking to a Western context, this is a pretty fundamental distinction between the US and the EU in the understanding (and, crucially, in the implementation/enforcement) of human rights.
I can't pretend to do justice to the long history of the concept, but we can at least say that for the latter, privacy has been considered an important human right since at least the UN declaration of 1948. This has been carried over into European law, see all the iterations on EU data protection laws. The UN statement is Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
For the US, this dimension of human rights did not deeply inform policy. Here discussion around a "right to privacy" really began in a different context with Brandeis and a right to be "left alone", largely meaning from the press. Many of the cases that inform privacy law in the US are oriented towards such scenarios and do not necessarily translate well to the context of data. See http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva.... There is rather a discussion on the accuracy of financial data about a person that stems from credit reporting.
The other area that would have to be discussed is of course wire-tapping laws, but leave that for another day... In sum, the question of a "right to privacy" has a long tangled history even just within the West, but is decidedly a thing in the EU.
I can't pretend to do justice to the long history of the concept, but we can at least say that for the latter, privacy has been considered an important human right since at least the UN declaration of 1948. This has been carried over into European law, see all the iterations on EU data protection laws. The UN statement is Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
For the US, this dimension of human rights did not deeply inform policy. Here discussion around a "right to privacy" really began in a different context with Brandeis and a right to be "left alone", largely meaning from the press. Many of the cases that inform privacy law in the US are oriented towards such scenarios and do not necessarily translate well to the context of data. See http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva.... There is rather a discussion on the accuracy of financial data about a person that stems from credit reporting.
The other area that would have to be discussed is of course wire-tapping laws, but leave that for another day... In sum, the question of a "right to privacy" has a long tangled history even just within the West, but is decidedly a thing in the EU.