Divine omniscience, privacy, and the state

Traditional theism teaches that God engages in a relentless form of observation for every human being. If, as is widely supposed, humans have a right to privacy, then it seems that God constantly violates this right. In this paper we argue that there is both a defensible philosophical excuse and justification for this infringement. We also argue that this defense is extensible to human social and political contexts; it provides the vital elements of a theory of just privacy infringement. This theory is broadly compatible both with major forms of political theory and with the main conceptions of privacy defended in recent philosophical and jurisprudential literature.