A Short History of Privacy

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Revision as of 19:33, 23 April 2008

1 Tutorial Summary
2 Detailed Description
3 Presenter
4 Background Resources

Tutorial Summary

This tutorial provides a way for newcomers and foreign visitors to get up-to-date. It covers early wiretapping, the Census, postal confidentiality, and commercial exploitation of an individualâs image. At each stage, new technology like the high-speed press, telephone, telegraph, camera, computer, and the Internet motivated reforms. The tutorial moves to automated databases and âfair information principles,â then PCs, email, encryption, and the Internet in the 1990s, along with targeted marketing. Covering legal, technological, and cultural developments, the course is based on the acclaimed book âBen Franklinâs Web Siteâ by Robert Ellis Smith, the tutorial leader.

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Detailed Description

This tutorial will provide a way for newcomers to the privacy field and foreign visitors to get up-to-date on the current issues and to know how they evolved over the past decades.

The session begins with an account of privacy in the U.S. since its founding to World War II, and to a lesser extent in Europe â covering early electronic surveillance, concern about the Census and the confidentiality of the mail, and legal cases about commercial exploitation of an individualâs image or persona. At each stage it was new technology that motivated worries about privacy â the camera, the high-speed press, the telephone and telegraph, the computer, and the Internet.

Then the tutorial moves to concern in the 1960s and 1970s about large automated databases in business and government and the development in North America and Europe of âfair information principlesâ in personal-data collection. This led to enactment of laws on both sides of the Atlantic affecting credit reporting, government files, and student records.

The landscape changed remarkably with the coming of personal computers, email, and the Internet in the 1990s. Now computing power was decentralized, and a huge majority of the population exposed their personal information without knowing the consequences. At the same time came a trend in direct marketing to exploit personal information about consumers so that advertising could be targeted towards them specifically.

Now, in the first decade of the new century, the emphasis is on locational information â ATMs, cell phones, GPS, aerial and satellite surveillance â as distinguished from data collection. Having others know your whereabouts is now perhaps more threatening than having them know how you spend your money.

This tutorial, which will cover legal, technological, and cultural developments, is based on the acclaimed book âBen Franklinâs Web Site: Privacy and Curiosity From Plymouth Rock to the Internetâ by Robert Ellis Smith, the tutorial leader. It was last offered at CFP in the year 2000 in Toronto.

Taking the tutorial will vastly enhance the participantsâ understanding of the myriad of concepts and references they will encounter later in the week.

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Presenter

The course is based on the acclaimed book âBen Franklinâs Web Site: Curiosity and Privacy from Plymouth Rock to the Internetâ by Robert Ellis Smith, the tutorial leader. He will present the course alone. He is an attorney. He has covered the privacy field since 1974 and was personally involved in much of the history of this issue. He has written the definitive account of privacy in U.S. history. He can include references to Canada and Europe. He offered this tutorial at CFP in Toronto in the year 2000. He is experienced as a lecturer and teacher at Brown University, University of Maryland, Harvard College, and scores of professional conferences and government briefings here and abroad.

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