Alan Westin | Privacy scholar, 83

Alan Westin, 83, one of the first and most widely respected scholars to explore the issues of privacy in the information age, died Monday at a hospice in Saddle River, N.J. He had cancer, his son, Jeremy Westin, said.

A professor of public law and government, Mr. Westin taught at Columbia University for nearly four decades. Through his prolific academic writing and frequent media appearances, he became nationally known as one of the most knowledgeable, prescient, and reasonable voices on privacy questions in modern society.

Mr. Westin "was the most important privacy scholar since Louis Brandeis," said Jeffrey Rosen, a George Washington University law professor, referring to the late Supreme Court justice who memorably articulated "the right to be left alone."

Mr. Westin recast Brandeis' definition for the era of computers. Privacy was the ability to control how much information about ourselves we reveal to others. - Washington Post