In this sense, I'd call privacy part of the social level in Maslow's heirarchy of needs. It's a more abstracted need than food or shelter, which is why people

In this sense, I'd call privacy part of the social level in Maslow's heirarchy of needs. It's a more abstracted need than food or shelter, which is why people will historically give up social needs for the physical fundamentals--but it's only less important than food and shelter in the sense that layers 4-7 of the OSI model are less important than layers 1-3.