Spy on Thy Neighbor

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Our willingness to trade privacy for a 21st century rendition of street justice may be due in part to our changing expectations of privacy. In a poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, 91 percent of the 1,200 adults surveyed said that 'our expectations of privacy have changed due to technologies and the Internet.'

We're even willing to give up a fair amount of our own privacy through social networking and photo-sharing sites like MySpace and Flickr. In an article for the Futurist (only an abstract of the article is available online), Patrick Tucker suggests that self-surveillance -- recording and exhibiting oneself on the internet -- has a greater effect on our privacy than do public security cameras. Tucker quotes privacy expert Amitai Etzioni, who says, 'People have become very willing to disclose things for a number of reasons -- for 15 minutes' fame on television, for convenience, for coupons and special marketing incentives, and so on.' According to Etzioni, all of this amounts not to our loss of privacy but to our loss of privateness -- the sense of what's too personal to air in public. A few minutes watching home videos on YouTube is all it takes to confirm Etzioni's thesis.

Go there >> The Snoop Next Door

Go there, too >> What is Privacy?

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