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primers
This
part of the guide highlights writing about privacy. We've
selected books from our library because they've shaped
debate about privacy in cyberspace, they offer particular
insights, or are simply entertaining.
 Principles & Philosophies
Fred Schoenman's Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An
Anthology (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 84) and The
Right to Privacy (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 00), a
collection of recent essays edited by Ellen Paul &
Fred Miller, offer an introduction to academic thinking
about privacy.
Sisela Bok's Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment
& Revelation (Oxford, Oxford Uni Press 85) is more
accessible. Oscar Gandy's The Panoptic Sort: A
Political Economy of Personal Information (Boulder, Westview 92)
is unfortunately out of print but more insightful than
writing by Michel Foucault and others of that ilk.
points of reference
There's an extensive literature from the 1970s onwards
regarding public versus private life and its implications.
For an introduction consult Public & Private in
Thought & Practice (Chicago, Uni of Chicago Press
97) edited by Jeff Weintraub & Krishan Kumar. The five volume A
History of Private Life (Cambridge, Belknap Press 87-)
under the general editorship of Philippe Aries &
Georges Duby is uneven but offers insights
into why privacy is contested.
Peter Ward's A History of Domestic Space: Privacy &
the Canadian Home (Vancouver, Uni of British Columbia
00) uses a smaller canvas but is strongly recommended.
Classics & Commercials
Vance Packard's The Naked Society (Harmondsworth,
Penguin 67) built on a long tradition of agitation about privacy in the US.
Individual comments in what's become the Silent Spring
of the modern privacy movement have inevitably dated.
However, many of Packard's examples remain current.
Particular abuses from the early sixties are reflected in
criticisms by the US Federal Trade Commissioner and
Communications Commission in reports noted on the
preceding page of this guide.
For recent warnings of the 'death of privacy' consult Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the
21st Century (Sebastopol, O'Reilly 00) and the less measured The
End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance Is Becoming A Reality (New
York, New Press 99) by Reg Whitaker.
Erik
Larson's The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Became
Public Commodities (New York, Penguin 94) updates
Packard.
Ellen Alderman & Caroline Kennedy The Right To
Privacy (New York, Knopf 95) uses a similar approach
in exploring the US Bill of
Rights through a tour of workplace privacy, bio-rights and
police strip searches.
Jeffrey Rosen's The
Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (New York,
Random 00) is another philosophical treatment. It's built around an
argument that privacy's important because it protects us from being
judged out of context in a "world of short attention spans"
where isolated facts - or factoids - are mistaken for genuine knowledge.
Barrington Moore Jr's Privacy: Studies in Social & Cultural
History (Armonk, Sharpe 84) is more insightful; Robert Smith's Ben
Franklin's Web Site: Privacy & Curiosity From Plymouth Rock to the
Internet (Cambridge, Privacy Journal 00) is better on the US
background.
Three masterful studies by Ithiel de
Sola Pool are 'must read': Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in
an Electronic Age (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 83), Technologies
Without Boundaries (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 90) and the
prescient Politics In Wired Nations (New Brunswick, Transaction
98).
Simon Davies' Big Brother: Australia's Growing Web of
Surveillance (Sydney, Simon & Schuster 92) is
fashionably sensationalist. We consider that it lacks
depth and balance. Davies' Big
Brother: Britain's Web of Surveillance & the New
Technological Order (London, Pan 96) is less
impressive
regulatory
frameworks
Priscilla Regan's Legislating
Privacy: Technology, Social Values & Public Policy (Chapel Hill,
Uni of North Carolina Press 95) provides a useful introduction to US
legislative attempts to reconcile privacy and technology.
Her book
is lucid and insightful, touching on questions ranging from caller ID
through to genetic testing. We regard it as one of the major
studies in the
past two decades.
Fred Cate's Privacy in the Information Age
(Washington, Brookings Institution 97) is shorter and more
narrowly-focussed. His argument against EU-style regulation has
gained the support of many US policy makers and business leaders.
A Canadian perspective is provided by the essays in Visions of
Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age (Toronto, Uni of Toronto
Press 99) edited by Colin Bennett, whose discussion of the Canadian legislation in relation to
international developments we noted above.
Bennett's Regulating Privacy: Data Protection & Public
Policy in Europe & the United States (Ithaca, Cornell
Uni Press 92) is essential reading.
We mentioned the Electronic Privacy
Information Centre (EPIC) above. Marc
Rotenberg, its Director, along with
Philip Agre, edited the excellent essays in Technology & Privacy:
The New Landscape (Cambridge, MIT Press 97). They explore
privacy-enhancing and privacy-eroding technologies, philosophical
issues, and legislative responses in Europe and elsewhere.
High Noon on the Electronic
Frontier: Conceptual Issues In Cyberspace (Cambridge, MIT Press 1996)
edited
by Peter Ludlow has chapters on privacy
principles, network practicalities (Enemy of the State style
surveillance is still some way off, with apologies to Hollywood),
workplace privacy, data profiling in direct marketing, medical records
and why a positive approach to privacy by business makes good sense.
Mark
Stefik's The Internet Edge: Social, Technical and Legal Challenges
for a Networked World (Cambridge, MIT Press 99) is
characteristically thoughtful.
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