Surveillance Society

"Privacy" makes me think about those diaries that used to come with locks -- my sister had one under all the other papers in her desk. You could jigger them with a safety pin, paper clip or nail file, anything, actually. But the concept was nice. Or I think of how much I hated going door-to-door selling popcorn, cheese, and chocolate to strangers for my elementary school. I think of trying on bathing suits at a skateboard shop while in high school, and the rumor that the guys who owned the shop had planted cameras in the dressing rooms. In other words, privacy was literal and seemed tangible.

Privacy now means that whole companies of strangers know that I, myself, am not apt to buy popcorn, although perhaps cheese and chocolate; they know if they really want to get me, offer the new Patty Griffin CD or a good deal on Adidas Poseidon running shoes, and they'll peg my size. What about the places where privacy is still rather literal, such as the doctor's office or pharmacy? It wouldn't be unprecedented if a non-profit cancer organization started sending solicitations based on prescriptions or records. Or how about this -- when was the last time you looked up some disease or ailment in an online medical encyclopedia, for your own personal use or for, say, a newspaper article? Take leprosy, for example. Unseen Web bugs, cookies, and click-stream monitoring all report that you've been there, and they don't ask why.

Even if you don't use the Internet and thus aren't subject to the surveillance technology that helps e-merchants sell things, a 1993 federal law regulating credit bureaus allows the sale, to anyone, of your name, age, address, phone number, Social Security number, and your mother's maiden name. A new federal law allows banks, insurers, brokers and investment banks to share client information. These same laws help information brokers, with slogans like "No more secrets!," to sell anyone the details of your bank account, unlisted phone number, place of employment, and more. The headline-making consequences of this -- harassment, stalking, murder -- are rare enough that politics and law have yet to catch up with localized outrages.

The far more common result of compromised information, both on the Internet and off, is identity theft, worth about $745 million nationwide in 1997, according to the Secret Service, and credit card fraud. As a result, "privacy" itself is now a hot e-commerce product on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Consider the competition among encryption technologies: American Express' disposable credit cards, called Private Payments, and iPrivacy, the transaction-privatizing software start-up staffed by scientists, a venture capitalist, and former Citibank credit card managers.

It's clear that consumers want safe, private on-line credit card transactions. And it's clear, given the growing prominence of anonymous e-mail and Web surfing tools that we're beginning to appreciate the porousness of the Internet. The polls, by Harris, Scripps-Howard, and the Pew Internet and Family Life Project, argue that Americans care more about privacy now than ever before. The topic has become so prevalent in the zeitgeist that the main quest in a fluffy movie like Charlie's Angels is to protect the identity of Charlie, that very secretive man somewhere beyond the speakerphone, and to save "privacy as we know it." Indeed, thanks to Drew, Lucy, and Cameron, privacy has gone Hollywood.

But then there's the presence of Oprah, The Real World, The Truman Show, and their numerous imitators, all evidencing Americans' congenital nosiness and obsession with personal disclosure. Add to this Monicagate, the monitoring of public places by surveillance cameras, and the tenuousness of a woman's right to chose -- which is based on a constitutional right to privacy -- and one wonders if Americans are truly concerned about privacy, in principle, as a civil right. Or is it just our credit cards and bank accounts?