The Limits Of Privacy [Paperback]
Author: Amitai Etzioni | Language: English | ISBN: 046504090X | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Limits Of Privacy
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Privacy is perhaps the most hallowed of American rights—and most people are concerned that new technologies available to governments and corporations threaten to erode this most privileged of rights. But in The Limits of Privacy, Amitai Etzioni offers a decidedly different point of view, in which the right to privacy is balanced against concern for public safety and health. Etzioni looks at five flashpoint issues: Megan’s Laws, HIV testing of infants, deciphering of encrypted messages, national identification cards, and medical records, and concludes that there are times when Amricans’ insistence on privacy is not in the best interests of society at large. He offers four clear and concise criteria which, when applied jointly, help us to determine when the right to privacy should be overridden for the greater public good.Almost every week headlines warn us that our cell phones are being monitored, our e-mails read, and our medical records traded on the open market. Public opinion polls show that Americans are dismayed about incursions against personal privacy. Congress and state legislatures are considering laws designed to address their concerns.Focusing on five flashpoint issues—Megan’s Law, mandatory HIV testing of infants, encryption of electronic documents, national identification cards and biometric identifiers, and medical records—The Limits of Privacy argues counterintuitively that sometimes major public health and safety concerns should outweigh the individual’s right to privacy. Presenting four concise criteria to determine when the right to privacy should be preserved and when it should be overridden in the interests of the wider community, Etzioni argues that, in some cases, we would do well to sacrifice the privacy of the individual in the name of the common good.
- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (April 4, 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 046504090X
- ISBN-13: 978-0465040902
- Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #949,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
While The New Golden Rule was aimed strictly at academic audiences, The Limits of Privacy speaks to all who care about the moral, legal and policy issues raised by the tension between personal privacy and the common good, especially public health and safety.
The book explores five currently hot issues:
* Megan's Laws: Etzioni argues that these laws do not do enough to protect children from sex offenders. He outlines a whole new approach to dealing with pedophiles.
* HIV Testing of Infants: The book shows that many infants die unnecessarily because the vast majority of states has not yet adopted a testing procedure which has worked in New York to identify and treat infected newborns.
* Bio-metrics: In very short order your face and hand will become your 100% reliable, unforgible ID card. Anonymity will vanish, but so will most fugitives from the law, illegal immigrants, welfare cheats, and many others who rely on false IDs.
* Hyper-privacy: New encryption programs allow your e-mail to be completely private. But how can we use this technology to protect our communications and transactions, and also be sure that this same hyper-privacy is not afforded to Internet-savvy drug lords, pedophiles, and terrorists? Etzioni shows what might be done.
* Medical privacy: The privacy of your medical records is violated daily when corporations trade that information on the open market. This is a case of Big Bucks, not Big Brother, violating our privacy. What can be done about these Privacy Merchants?
Each of these issues is debated daily in the media, in public meetings, in legislatures, and at home. Etzioni takes a highly original stance on all of them: Rather than decrying the loss of privacy, his first concern is safety and health.
The right to be let alone, as Louis Brandeis and his law partner Samuel Warren so famously defined the right of privacy, expresses an idea that is profoundly and authentically American. After all, we all tend to bristle at the notion that someone, whether it is big government, big business, or just a nosy neighbor, might be eavesdropping on our phone calls, or browsing through our medical records, or sniggering over the movies we rent at the video store. And even the most priggish Clinton hater ought to be able to understand why the president might feel a bit aggrieved to discover that an intern has been yakking about their sexual adventures to someone who first rigs a homemade tap on her phone and then puts on a wire to go to lunch. "No one needs to read a book-let alone a philosophical tract or an extensive policy analysis- to be reminded that the right to be let alone is much cherished," allows Amitai Etzioni in The Limits of Privacy, and that "without privacy no society can long remain free." Yet Etzioni insists on presenting us with "the other side of the privacy equation." His book is a well-argued brief in favor of the proposition that the right of privacy ought not to be regarded as something sacred and thus inviolable. Privacy and public interest exist in a state of constant tension, Etzioni suggests, and sometimes "the common good entails violating privacy." The flash points between privacy and public safety can be spotted all over the landscape-- drug testing in the schools and the workplace, sobriety checkpoints on the streets and highways, surveillance cameras in parking lots and shopping malls.
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