Privacy
A Manifesto

Publisher:  Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA
Year Published:  2008  
Pages:  160pp   ISBN:  9780691136721
Library of Congress Number:  BF637.P74S74513 200   Dewey:  323.44/8
What ever happened to privacy? The simple right to be left alone? Surveillance cameras track our movements. Governments monitor our phone calls, e-mails, and Internet habits. Insurance companies know what drugs we take. Banks and credit agencies keep tabs on our smallest purchases. And new technologies -- which gather, store, and share information as never before--have made all of this possible.

But, as the acclaimed social thinker Wolfgang Sofsky shows in this brief and powerful defense of privacy, neither technology nor fears of terrorism deserve all the blame. Rather, through indifference and the desire for attention, we have been accomplices in the loss of our privacy. When we aren't resigning ourselves to privacy's disappearance as the inevitable price of living in a new age, we are eagerly embracing opportunities to divulge personal information to people we know -- and, increasingly, to people we don't.

Dramatically demonstrating how much privacy we have already surrendered, Sofsky describes a day in the life of an average modern citizen--in other words, a person under almost constant scrutiny. He also briefly traces the changing status of privacy from ancient Rome to today, explains how liberty and freedom of thought depend on privacy, and points to some of the places where privacy is under greatest threat, from health to personal space.

[From publisher]



Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Traces 1
Chapter 2: Power and Privacy
Chapter 3: Retrospectives
Chapter 4: Freedom and Privacy
Chapter 5: Territories of the Self
Chapter 6: Secrets of the Body
Chapter 7: Private Spaces
Chapter 8: Property
Chapter 9: Information
Chapter 10: Freedom of Thought

Notes

Subject Headings

• Privacy
• Privacy Protection