Contemporary Privacy Issues

Willis H. Ware

1. Introduction
2. Historical Development
3. United States Posture
4. Source of the Problem
5. Privacy as a Public Policy Issue
6. Contemporary Privacy
6.1 Current Example
7. Public Policy Again
7.1 An Illustration – CNI
8. The Broadened Public Issue
9. Possible Approaches to Protection
10. Related Effects
11. Privacy as Social Equity
12. New Privacy Versus Old
13. Context for New Privacy
14. Privacy Versus Public Distaste
15. The Future for Privacy
16. References

Privacy as Social Equity

While it is possible to list choices for dealing with privacy, how is the country going to come to grips with the intricacy of the matter and with the public policy aspects?

Here is one construct:

1. Identify the issue as a social-equity one.
   
2. Get the public policy aspects clearly in view and consciously determine them.
   
3. Identify the stakeholders and their respective interests; compare/ debate/contrast/compromise among the obviously competing interests and strive for a balance point around which one can think constructively about desired remedial actions such as law.

Obvious stakeholders in privacy include each and every citizen, society at large, law enforcement, the information industry, and government. There may be others; surely all of the private sector will be interested and much of it will want to be involved. A major problem though is to find the forum in which to debate such a complex matter, and how to conduct the debate in an orderly way.

Issues stated in an equity context are well known in the affairs of the country. Frequently the issue of concern is between an industry and organized public interest groups (e.g., utilization of natural resources such as timber or oil vs. conservation groups). But as an equity issue, privacy has some quite different dimensions, notably its pervasiveness throughout all societal processes. It is not accidental that such is the case; information after all has a very central role in everything.

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