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From: epstein@sunc4.cs.uiuc.edu (Milt Epstein)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <27FA2C53.3DD0@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 91 19:26:11 GMT
References: <63473@bbn.BBN.COM> <1991Apr01.052655.3549@looking.on.ca> <4082.27f77d68@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <1991Apr02.054249.27643@looking.on.ca> <10853@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1991Apr02.192225.8159@looking.on.ca> <1991Apr2.213730.1336@cs.cornell.edu>
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In <1991Apr2.213730.1336@cs.cornell.edu> wayner@CS.Cornell.EDU (Peter Wayner) writes:

>[responding to some of brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) comments
>on privacy]:
>
>Really, most of this "treasured" information is and always has been
>"legally" public. The notion of "privacy" was generally soceital. For
>instance, everyone in the small town might know that "Mr. Smith" was
>having a fling with "Ms. Jones", but it was not "polite" to "gossip."
>Most people, though, could just figure it out by watching them in public.
>
>In a similar way, a merchant in the small town would know that the
>Doctor's wife was an excellant target for the new batch of Parisian
>Perfume he just received and might make a point of mentioning this
>to her. Why? Because he's seen her walking down the street in high
>fashion clothes. 
>
>Now if he used the high-tech equivalent in our global, electronic
>village, the merchant would roll out the mailing lists that he 
>bought from Bergdorf-Goodman's. 

One problem with this line of reasoning is that things don't scale up
well from the small town to the entire society. 

First of all, consider what would happen if the things that people
learned about someone "by watching them in public" were incorrect.
The consequences in the small town may not be great (perhaps some
gossip).  On the other hand, on a larger scale, the consequences could
be more serious -- being denied credit or other things due to mistakes
on your credit record, being denied employment, perhaps even being
arrested or subject to other forms of harassment.

Second, if we take the extension of the "merchant contacts doctor's
wife" example, then we will be getting junk mail or telemarketing
calls from tons of merchants (which may not only be a personal hassle
and inconvenience to deal with, but is also a waste of paper and
resources, if you are concerned about those types of things).

One last point -- most of the people that I have talked to that were
from small towns hated the fact that they had no privacy.

-- 
Milt Epstein
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois
epstein@cs.uiuc.edu