These days, the threat to privacy in the U.S. mainly comes from Big Bucks rather than Big Brother, from select private corporations rather than the government.—Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University professor and the author of The Limits of Privacy.
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Fast forward to the state of privacy in 2015.
Your daughter, Lara, is now an adult. She wakes up to a customized radio station playing a new song with a 77 percent chance of becoming one of Lara's favorites, based on a 24/7 analysis of her personal listening tastes.
In Lara's kitchen, an Internet link automatically compiles relevant news and entertainment gossip based on Lara's constantly updated preferences. This morning, she wants local and sports news -- but no football -- plus reviews of the three latest movies she is most likely to enjoy and a traffic report tailored to her commute.
On the road, Lara's car is identified by sensors so she automatically hears her top tunes -- and so advertisers that track Lara's purchases can pitch products most likely to catch her attention. Twenty minutes away, her boss is alerted that Lara has left for work but is exiting the interstate to stop for coffee.
Before reaching the office, Lara wants to get an update on a medical problem she discussed online with her doctor the previous day. She touches a dashboard button, says "Dr. Louis" to auto-dial and is confirmed by voiceprint to download her diagnosis into a handheld communicator.
Dr. Louis' computer sends an electronic prescription for Lara to a local pharmacy, at the same time updating her medical records with her HMO at work, debiting her medical account for the standard $750 online e-visit, repricing her life insurance premium (up), informing her fitness center of a temporary change in her workout and suggesting by e-mail that her boyfriend send flowers and a "hope you feel better" note.
Utopian conveniences? Or an end of personal privacy as we know it?
Many of us would find business' constant monitoring of Lara's life too intrusive. But Lara grew up in a busy, tech-driven world and can't imagine how people lived without such highly focused, electronic service.
As uneasy as we might be with such a lifestyle, Lara may have few concerns with the state of her personal privacy.
For each generation, it seems privacy -- what it is and how much we want -- is a moving target.
In 2001, that target is moving especially fast. And our sense of privacy, fading on so many fronts at once, has many of us pretty darn nervous.
What sites do we visit on the Internet? Web companies can track us.
Who owns our genetic data? Researchers want to buy it.
Who's tracking our physical whereabouts? Cell phone and auto companies increasingly will know where we are, in the name of safety.
Why did you send that off-color e-mail at work? Your employer might be checking -- and scratching that promotion.
Was it a bad mistake to buy your heart medicine with a big bank's credit card? You might be denied life insurance by some affiliate of the bank because of such telling purchases.
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During periods of tech revolutions, we tend to get very upset about privacy, privacy historian Robert Ellis Smith says.
We got scared in the 1890s when the rise of cameras, telephones and high-speed publishing made us feel others could capture our image and tell distant people what we were up to.
In the 1970s, we renewed our fear of Big Brother when giant mainframe computers allowed the government and big companies to start gathering large amounts of data on us.
Our fears were refreshed in the 1990s when personal computers, database programs and the Internet empowered individuals and just about any small dot-com with the capability to correlate data about us with the same ease as large organizations.
No wonder we're in another national frenzy for tougher privacy laws.
So far this year, almost 50 pieces of legislation relating to privacy have been introduced in Congress. More than 465 privacy-related bills have been offered up in 46 U.S. states.
If only legislative volume was the answer. Consider:
Legislation inevitably lags the ability of technology to find new ways to intrude on privacy. Many of the privacy measures are piecemeal and even contradictory, suggesting lawmakers don't know what the public wants.
Most privacy law protects people against invasions by the government. But corporations are the principal force bringing new pressures on privacy.
People say they want their privacy protected. But they often are only too willing to share intimate details about their social, medical and financial situations at Web sites (in exchange for access or discounts) or with telemarketers.
Critics (notably the media) warn that unfocused and blanket privacy laws can cut off public access to an array of computer-based records. Should information once kept on paper and long considered public become private just because it is now accessible via computer?
Among the open records that are falling under various restrictive laws are driver's licenses and traffic accidents. Certain court records about divorces, crimes and bankruptcy filings also are affected.
In Florida, the recent death of NASCAR king Dale Earnhardt prompted a state bill to close autopsy results to the public. The state also is making it more difficult to know what tax incentives are offered to lure relocating companies.
Some of these measures need to be reconsidered.
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How can we be so anxious about privacy if we're no longer even sure what it is?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, in a 1928 dissent, embraced the value of privacy when he wrote that the "right to be let alone" was "the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."
Smith offers a more modern definition. Privacy is the "desire by each of us for physical space where we can be free of interruption, intrusion, embarrassment or accountability and the attempt to control the time and manner of disclosures of personal information about ourselves."
Can't argue with those two guys.
But here's the privacy trick.
What once outrages some folks becomes taken for granted by others.
Savvy Internet users complain about "cookies" that can track their Web travels. But few users bother to block cookies by adjusting their PC software.
People complained bitterly about e-mail spam when it first began filling up their electronic mailboxes. Now most folks just accept that they must spend time deleting it.
In 2015, thanks to 14 more years of technology advances, the privacy front should be drastically altered -- again. There will be new intrusions we cannot imagine yet, and presumably new rules that try to stem the flood.
A grown-up Lara no doubt will value some concept of privacy in 2015 as much as we do so today. With luck, she will still remember and agree with the views of Justice Brandeis and Smith.
And hopefully, she may feel that sense of privacy is not irreparably gone.
