A cold wind is blowing across the landscape of privacy. The twin imperatives of technological advancement and coun­terterrorism have led to dramatic and possibly irreversible changes in what people can expect to remain of private life. Nearly 10 years ago Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems famously pronounced the death of privacy. “Get over it,” he said. Some people, primarily those younger than about 25, claim to have done just that, embracing its antithesis, total public disclosure. And of course in many cases—determining the whereabouts of a terrorist or the carrier of a disease—public interest has an overwhelming claim on information that is usually private.

Yet in many contexts—banking, commerce, diplomacy, medicine—private com­­munications are essential. The founding fa­­thers of the Republic put great stock in personal privacy; privacy is embodied (though, as we are often reminded, not stated) in the Bill of Rights. In her keynote essay Esther Dyson clarifies what “privacy” means by reminding us what it is not: several important issues commonly labeled dilemmas of privacy are better understood as issues of security, health policy, insurance or self-pre­sentation.

This article was originally published with the title Privacy in an Age of Terabytes and Terror.

3 Comments

1. 1. proadventurer 01:01 AM 8/18/08

   In this age of blogs, twitter and myspace I have given up the idea of privacy. I stand accountable for all I do good or bad. And I do stand up to it and its not always pleasant.

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2. 2. Steve5412 11:09 AM 8/21/08

   Data ownership is something more than legislated data privacy, and something more than technological security. There is a new wind blowing the current 'documents' web toward a potentially more user-centric, and more user-empowering, 'data' web in which data ownership can flourish. From the data web may well spring private and public data banking systems. I'd love to see SciAm write about that.

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3. 3. vman8r 04:01 PM 9/26/09

   Why don't they show the whole article? I've been a subscriber of both SciAm & SciAm Mind for a good while and now I need something for my college class and I can't get the whole article online?? WTF

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