NEGATIVE-PRIVACY-GENERAL 103

AMERICA AS A SOCIETY IS NOT CONCERNED WITH PRIVACY

SOCIETY DOESN'T EXPECT MUCH PRIVACY

Anita L. Allen, Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, "COERCING PRIVACY," William & Mary Law Review, March, 1999, 40 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 723, EE2001-hxm, P.

The final decades of the twentieth century could be remembered for the rapid erosion of expectations of personal privacy and of the taste for personal privacy in the United States. Recent polling data as well as high profile litigation and policy debates suggest impressively high levels of concern about physical and informational privacy. n29 Certain legal and policy trends; certain modes of market, consumer, and political behavior; and certain dimensions of popular culture, though, suggest low levels of concern. n30 I sense that people expect increasingly little physical,  [*730]  informational, and proprietary privacy, and that people seem to prefer less of these types of privacy relative to other goods.

WE ARE A NATION OF EXHIBITIONISTS

ADAM WOLFSON; executive editor of the Public Interest, The Weekly Standard, March 27, 2000 SECTION: BOOKS & ARTS; Pg. 38 TITLE: The Private Interest; In our confessional culture, we have a right of privacy -- and nothing private // acs-VT2001

Life in America is marked by two apparently contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, we are a nation of exhibitionists and voyeurs. Sometimes it's an intimate who "tells all" (as when the first lady reported that her husband had been abused as a child), but usually we have no one but ourselves to blame for the disappearance of privacy. Whether it's the president blabbing about his taste in underwear, "ordinary" Americans divulging their fantasies on The Jerry Springer Show, or "cyber-exhibitionists" broadcasting their lives on the Internet, we seem unable to keep anything to ourselves. 60 Minutes hit an all-time low in 1998 when it televised Dr. Jack Kevorkian killing a man by lethal injection.

OUR SOCIETY HAS LOST ITS CLAIM TO PRIVACY BECAUSE OF ITS OBSESSION FIWHT OPENNESS

ROBYN SARAH, The Gazette (Montreal), March 4, 2000, SECTION: Editorial / Op-ed; B5 TITLE: Limits of privacy: Our laws too often shield children and people who are confused, vulnerable or self-destructive // acs-VT2001

In our age of televised trials, talk-show psychotherapy and tell-all personal memoirs, we have grown so inured to public self-revelation that one could argue we have lost the idea of privacy altogether. Daily, casually, we consume details of other people's sex lives, dysfunctional families, intimate medical problems and spiritual epiphanies.

IF PRIVACY IS SO IMPORTANT, WE WOULDN'T BE ALLOWING IT TO BE LOST SO EASILY

Denise Caruso, The New York Times, August 30, 1999, SECTION: Section C; Page 5; TITLE: TECHNOLOGY: Digital Commerce; Consumers keep saying they want personal information kept private. What will it take to get industry to listen? // acs-EE2001

IF privacy is indeed the pivotal concern for people who use data networks -- and by every objective indication to date, it is -- then why are companies and law enforcement agencies still getting away with monitoring and collecting, and using and selling, as much of our personal data as they can get their hands on?

"AMERICANS HAVE NO SENSE OF PRIVACY"

William W. Streeter, Editor-in-Chief, ABA Banking Journal, March, 1999; Pg. 15 TITLE: Can privacy survive in a database world? // acs-VT2001

" An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country." So said George Bernard Shaw in a speech in 1933. Imagine what the often caustic English playwright would have said upon having supper interrupted by a telemarketing call.

AMERICANS DON'T REALLY SEEM TO CARE ALL THAT MUCH ABOUT PRIVACY

Kirkus Reviews, SEPTEMBER 1, 1999 AUTHOR: Sykes, Charles J. TITLE: THE END OF PRIVACY // acs-VT2001

What do Americans think about all of this? The answer seems to be, not much. Sykes is clearly frustrated by our lack of alarm in the face of a problem that has dire implications for individual autonomy. He suggests that our apathy stems from a combination of forces, ranging from our talk-show tell-all mentality to our sense that technology has become so ubiquitous that struggling against it is futile.