verybody has something they regard as being nobody's business but their own. This does not mean that they are up to no good, that they have a scandalous secret buried deep in their closet. Merely that there are details about their lives - from the mundane (their unlisted home telephone number perhaps) to the serious (such as treatment for a hereditary illness) - that they prefer to keep in a protected space marked private. Increasingly, however, our freedom to define a private space for ourselves is being restricted.