1. Subject of determination

The Bureau receives, with consistent regularity, complaints from adult residents seeking enforcement of a privacy boundary against the unit responsible for their existence. The complainant typically asserts that the parental unit has, in some recent or ongoing instance, accessed, recalled, recounted, or otherwise handled private information about the complainant in a manner the complainant did not authorize. The complainant requests that the Bureau order the parental unit to cease.

2. Determination

The Bureau cannot order the parental unit to cease. The privacy the complainant invokes was, in foundational terms, granted by the same unit. The same unit also constituted the first and most thorough breach of that privacy. The two events were a single event. They occurred at the moment of the complainant’s coming into existence and have not been separable since.

3. Reasoning

To grant a person privacy is to grant them an interior. The complainant has an interior because the parental unit produced one. To violate that interior, the unit had only to be present at the production. The unit was present. The unit produced it.

A privacy claim against a stranger, an acquaintance, a colleague, or a partner is procedurally addressable. These parties encountered the complainant once an interior already existed; the encounter could, in principle, have not occurred. A privacy claim against the originating parental unit is structurally different. The unit did not encounter the complainant’s interior. The unit was the original condition of its existence. The Bureau cannot order the unit to withdraw from a region the unit constituted.

4. Standing advisory

Residents are advised to direct privacy concerns against parental units toward private negotiation, distance, or other personal arrangement. The Bureau will continue to accept these complaints at intake. It will not adjudicate them. They will be filed under the present determination and considered closed at receipt.

The Bureau notes that this finding is administrative, not consolatory. The complaint is real. The remedy requested is not available through this office.