The Evolution (or Devolution) of Privacy

Abstract

This paper explores changes in the meaning of privacy. Because individuals' understandings and experiences of privacy vary by sociohistorical contexts, privacy is difficult to define and even more challenging to measure. Avoiding common obstacles to privacy research, I examine privacy from the standpoint of its invasion. I develop a typology of privacy invasions and use it to analyze discussions of invasions of privacy in U.S. newspapers. I show that the nature of invasions discussed in the news is increasingly covert and continuous and find empirical support for the often-made claim that the concept of privacy is evolving in meaningful ways.

Information Privacy in Two Dimensions - Towards a Classification Scheme for Information Privacy Research

“…Consequently, a 'silo' effect may exist where researchers operate in their own areas and do not address the field as a whole. Indeed, Kasper [23] notes that researchers "tend to define privacy as understood within the confines of their specific research".…”

Medieval Security in the Modern State

“…Challenging the liberal model, the lords of private justice receive less public scrutiny and greater legal authority to impinge the privacy rights of individuals and search and detain suspects than the public system of justice (Bishop, 1988). Corporations have a long history of utilising various types of private coercion, from surveillance and spying to bloody violence, in order to control employees (Knudsen et al, 2003;Kasper, 2005) and repress labour unions (Nace, 2003).…”

Privacy as a Social Good

“…Surveillance, a form of observation, is sociologically relevant insofar as it violates or transforms social norms regarding appropriate observation and leads to consequences for individuals and groups in terms of inequality and power. Observation is but one component of privacy and the experience of its invasion, along with extraction and intrusion (Kasper 2005). My purpose here is not to dwell on the study of surveillance, but to assert that privacy-properly understood as a central topic in sociology-would illuminate it and other fundamental areas in the discipline.…”

“…Robert O'Harrow (2005) agrees, explaining in ABC's Primetime Live No Place to Hide that any resistance is "episodic and ad hoc" and that the drive continues to be in the direction of more monitoring, data collection, and analysis. While people may not be aware of the specifics in the ongoing battles over privacy, public opinion polls reveal that they have a distinct sense of the tendencies toward more surveillance and less privacy (Kasper 2005 The overall understanding of what is private has been transformed. This is apparent in the types of privacy invasions being committed.…”

“…No longer delineated by tangible physical barriers, it is now one's information, thoughts, and movements that primarily occupy the realm of privacy. Moreover, privacy is increasingly being invaded by the government and corpora-tions-powerful social agents over which individuals have little control (Kasper 2005). Though the loss of privacy is not perfectly quantifiable, the feeling is palpable and has become a social fact with important consequences.…”