Slashdot Mirror
Part One: Killing The "Inviolate Personality"
Jeffrey Rosen says he began writing The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America as an effort to understand the constitutional, legal and political drama behind the impeachment of President Clinton.
His exploration grew broader. The Clinton impeachment, Rosen later concluded, was really a window into a phenomenon that affects everybody, whether Kenneth Starr is after us or not: the erosion of privacy at home, at work and, especially, in cyberspace, where intimate personal information is increasingly vulnerable to exposure. All kinds of people -- litigants, employers, government agents and prosecutors, total strangers -- can now look with impunity at our diaries and e-mail, digital footprints and track the books we order and the Web sites we visit.
The Unwanted Gaze became an unsettling alarm of how technology and new laws -- especially those which spring from sexual harassment legislation -- have combined to make privacy nearly obsolete before most Americans have quite grasped just how much it's being threatened. When it comes to issues like technology and privacy, America is truly an unconscious civilization, blissfully trading away even prized and hard-won freedoms. (Yesterday, the White House announced that it planned to propose legislation that would set legal requirements for surveillance in cyberspace by law enforcement authorities.)
Invasions of privacy were a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, writes Rosen, who's a law school professor and columnist. And increasingly, they are a legacy of the new technologies and software deployed on the Net and the Web.
Privacy used to be regarded as a nearly sacred American right. Keeping British soldiers and government agents out of people's homes and lives was one of the primary justifications for the American Revolution. But most Americans have barely blinked as their tastes, habits and preferences have been routinely tracked online. That apathy might be changing. "The public is nervous and increasingly suspicious of what online and offline advertisers are doing to them," the chief privacy officer of AllAdvantage, a Net advertising firm warned recently. As people become more alarmed, so will politicians. That means more laws from Congress, always a frightening possibility when it comes to the Net.
This broad-based assault on privacy --by no means confined to the online world -- threatens one of the cornerstone ideas of individual rights that dates back to the Enlightenment, and was embraced by the American legal system -- the idea of the "inviolate personality," the belief that a human being's innermost convictions, communications and tastes were private, to be protected from monarchs and governments as well as prying gossips. Online, this is an especially powerful idea. We talk to strangers all the time, assume all sorts of postures and personalities, express all sorts of opinions in all sorts of places, explore strange sites and spaces, leave all sorts of tracks. That freedom of exploration and expression is one of the most powerful things about the Net and the Web, one of the things that makes it unique, that so many people love the most about them.
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others." That legal principle once prevented prosecutors from seizing and studying diaries, letters, and private papers. Thus many Americans were flabbergasted by the degree to which prosecutors could vacuum up the most intimate details of Monica Lewinsky's life, from her bookstore purchases to her private letters and e-mail. Whatever people thought of her relationship with this dunder-headed president, many were uncomfortable not only with the prosecutor's zeal but with the wide public dissemination her private life and records received in media and court documents. Lewinsky's "inviolate personality," however strange or narcissistic, was exposed and destroyed as thoroughly as anyone's in memory, possibly excepting Princess Diana.
Lewinsky -- along with much of the rest of the country -- was shocked to learn when agents seized her personal records and clothing that the right to privacy can be snatched away at any time. Her most personal e-mail messages to family and friends were posted all over the Web.
Rosen convincingly assigns a lot of the blame to recently-enacted harassment laws, which made the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky dramas possible. As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations. During the l980's and 90's, he writes, the Supreme Court recognized sexually explict speech and conduct that created a "hostile or offensive working environment" as a form of gender discrimination, a legal evolution that made it difficult for lower courts and employers to distinguish consensual affairs from illegal sexual coercion.
The threat of harassment suits has prompted companies to wantonly invade their workers' private e-mail and personal correspondence -- even to rifle their desks -- almost at will. Online or in the workplace, the idea of the "inviolate personality" is vanishing, not by vote or legislation but by a gradual erosion caused by a series of court rulings and the advance of new information technologies like the Net.
The inviolate personality has also been undermined by diverse other culprits.
On the Internet, snoops are only one danger. In cyberspace, warns Rosen, the greatest threat to privacy comes not from nosey employers or colleagues who tattle but from the electronic signatures and footprints that make it possible to monitor and trace just about everything we read, write, browse, or buy. As people reading this know well, most browsers are configured to reveal every Web site people visit as well as IP addresses which may identify individual users. Often, this invasive software is even admired and hailed as cool new stuff.
But that information can be -- is being -- collected and stored to create detailed profiles of user tastes and preferences in shopping, reading and other habits, all of great value to hungry retailers, increasingly global megacorporations for whom mass marketing -- thus the gathering of personal information -- is nearly a religion. It will also inevitably be used by law enforcement. The FBI's "Carnivore" system, so named, agents, say, because it is able to quickly get the "meat" in huge quanitities of e-mail and instant messaging systems, consists of hardware and software that trolls for information after being hooked up to the network of almost any ISP. Once installed, "Carnivore" has the ability to monitor all of the e-mail on a network, from the list of what mail is sent to the actual content of the communications. Like other forms of searches and seizures, "Carnivore" requires court approval to be deployed. But it's capable of gathering an unprecedented amount of communications from targets in seconds, including personal and intimate messages many people believe are being sent anonymously.
In the Corporate Republic that comprises contemporary America, information gatherers are much more likely to be companies than cops. Rosen cites Amazon's creepy software that uses ZIP codes and domain names to identify the books most purchased by employees of prominent corporations. Amazon also touts its "recognition" software that tracks its regular customers' buying habits and makes personalized recommendations to them. Rosen also recounts the flap over DoubleClick, the Net's largest advertising company, which last year was forced to delay a plan to create elaborate dossiers linking users' online and browsing habits with their actual identities.
The combination of gender discrimination laws and new technology, and the risk they post to the idea of individual privacy, amount to a seismic change. Throughout the United States, the young in general and students in particular have no right to privacy at all. Their computers and writings are routinely seized and examined, and their e-mail, personal correspondence, writing and speech are increasingly taken out of context and disseminated to authorities and law enforcement agencies.
Democratic states have always drawn a distinction between public and private speech, recognizing that the ability to expose parts of our identity in some contexts that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to real freedom.
Privacy is vital for the evolution of individual personalities, and for the formation of intimate relationships. It permits communications between friends, lovers and families. It is essential to freedom of expression and to any form of individualism, to the development of intellect and values. It's even essential to creativity. The idea that our reflexive reactions, frustrations, mistakes and missteps -- especially those expressed so freely, impulsively and widely online -- can at any time be disseminated to the world is a very real impediment to free speech and thought.
Next: Platforms for privacy?
The internet is an ocean of minds and it needs to stay that way. It's one of the last bastions where human interaction and human thought can roam, explore and interact largely without restriction. Without this, many people who have access to the net would feel increasingly boxed-in and claustrophobic. The government, your employer, other governments, your friends... They have no granted right to know every thought you think or care to share, yet you do have the freedom to share them -- and without revealing yourself, if you so desire.
Privacy and anonymity should be granted to those who wish to have it. I'm in favor of leaving things as they are. You can encrypt data. You can use pseudonyms. There are many things you can do to assert your privacy and anonymity. Please, leave government (all 200 of them that would like to regulate the internet) out of it and let technology govern the ability for privacy. As long as there is demand for it, and it is not made illegal, means of acheiving relatively secure privacy will be available and usable.
Further, not everyone who wants anonymity or privacy is on a soapbox, as you seem to be. There are people who are seeking legal information, medical information, information on dealing with rape, abuse, drug addiction, dealing with sexual harassment, unfair treatment at work, career advice, information on relationships, raising children, self-defense, constitutional rights, police mis-conduct, misconduct by government officials, alchoholism and a million other things which would be stifled if people could, without any effort, find out that you are Jane Jones of 1414 S Someplace and that you were concerned with the fact that your employer is threatening you with termination if you don't follow through with unethical and perhaps illegal conduct and that your husband is an alchoholic and you're not sure how to leave him and get assistance for yourself and your child without being put in danger and that you were raped when you were in high school and that you think you might have felt a lump in your left breast and are scared to death that it might be cancer.
These are the reasons that both privacy and anonymity is important. What is valuable on the internet is information and the free flow of it -- not the names attached to it. It has nothing to do with responsibility of the individual and everything to do with the very fundamental expectation of freedom from punishment, persecution and unjust attack by the unneeded granting of your personal information, unless deemed available by yourself.
I would really encourage people who just shrug their shoulders and say "bah! It's the new millenium. It's technology! Get off your soap box and live with it!" to reconsider their position. The internet is larger than Slashdot and people being accountable for their statements on the specs of the latest rumored graphics card -- and there are far greater risks and losses certain to come from not protecting privacy and anonymity than there are from protecting it. I, for one, would rather not fuck with it, lest we make the biggest mistake of our generation and wager the rights of future on-line generations.
Now I will jump off of my soapbox.
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seumas.com
But it seems to me that privacy as a concept is somewhat outdated
You don't understand what privacy is. It is not hiding any and all information about yourself. Privacy is control over personal information. It means *I* get to choose who knows what about me.
In order to personalise such medicines drug companies are going to require your DNA profile. Are you willing to give up on advances like this for the sake of some nebulous concept like privacy?
If I get to choose whether to submit my DNA profile (understanding I'll get a worse/none medicine if I don't), then I have no objection. If everybody is required to submit their DNA "for the public good" whether they want it or not, privacy has been violated.
More personal information is the key to any number of services and advances that will benefit you as an individual rather than being for the use of a generic person
Again, it's all fine as long as I get to choose whether I want to play these games. I have no objection to any "opt-in" schemes: some people don't need privacy at all (Jennycam, etc.)
threats to your personal safety and freedom are moving from the physical world to the internet.
Threats to my personal safety are moving to the internet? Huh? Let's say my machine gets owned and my hard drive published for all and sundry to see. What does it have to do with personal safety?
Thanks to the banner of privacy, criminals can hack your details with a much greater chance of getting away with it than if the internet is logged, verified and secured.
You are arguing for a police state. You seem to like the idea of living in a police state. That's a value choice and cannot really be argued.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Did John plan to write a review? It is hard to tell if he is summarizing the content of the book or propviding his own political commentary.
For another review of the book check out this link.
The prologue to the book and another review are available on the New York times site (free registration required...).
An interview Mr. Rosen gave to NPR's All things Considered can be heard here. Note: For some reason I cannot listen to this on my computer...
He manages to leave out many of Mr. Rosen's arguments for why private speech should be protected, and why these protections should be extended to our electronic utterances.
Mr. Rosen points out that much of our private speech only makes sense in context, and that that context includes our relationship with the person we are communicating with and their knowledge about us. Thus my letters to my wife or my best friend may make no sense when read by a perfect stranger (such as a police officer, judge or jury member).
He also touches on how allowing stranger access to our private thoughts and communication infringes our freedom. The title of the book even comes from a tenet of Jewish law that protects others from being watched without thier permission (thus the 'unwanted gaze').
IMHO It is much more important to publicize and emphasize the real reasons privacy is a basic freedom, rather than just repeating privacy like a mantra and grumbling about how stupid and thoughtless Americans are to let these freedoms be eroded by the "Corporate Republic".
I will. I promise..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
David Brin's premise, which I am also using, is that technology combined with power is and will erode personal privacy, and there's nothing we can do about that.
You are a bit confused. Your original statement was "losing personal privacy is OK if everybody else, specifically government, loses it too". My response was "no, it's not OK, and you can and should get government accountability without sacrificing personal privacy". Now you are saying "See, we are going to lose personal privacy anyway, so if we get government accountability into the bargain, this is not bad".
First of all, my point is that it is bad anyway. I am not a big fan of the "if you are going to be raped anyway, just relax and enjoy it" thinking. I do NOT think that making government transparent will in any shape or form compensate me for the loss of my privacy. Accountability of people in power is one thing, loss of personal privacy is another thing and I still don't see why you think they net each other out.
Second, I don't think that the loss of privacy is inevitable. Yes, technology is coming and one cannot stop it. But one can perfectly well stop its use by the government and law enforcement. Think about wiretaps. For a long time there has been technical capability to wiretap thousands and tens of thousands of people. Yet court-sanctioned wiretaps in the US number in hundreds per year. This is a straightforward example of privacy-invading technology being held in check by the legal system. I am not saying the same thing will happen to all the new technologies, but I don't see total surveillance as inevitable.
outlawing it creates the police state we want to avoid.
How come? If you outlaw, say, automatic face recognition and cross-referencing of personal information databases except by court order, how does this create the police state?
The answer is, turn the cameras back on the cameramen.
That's exactly my point: this is NOT the answer. To repeat myself, your loss of privacy does not compensate me for my loss of privacy.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.