This article addresses the question posed in the title, namely ,is privacy regulation a culturally universal process or is it a culturally specific phenomenon? Like the rabbi of Jewish folklore faced with petitioners holding irreconcilable opinions, my answer is “yes, both positions are correct!” This seemingly paradoxical response is based on an analysis of privacy as
(a) a culturally universal process involving dynamic, dialectic, and optimization features, and (b) a culturally specific process in terms of mechanisms used to regulate social interaction. Thus, I view privacy to be culturally pervasive at one level of analysis and culturally unique at another level of analysis.