Peter Barton: privacy guardian.

• Position: Interview with founder of the Privacy Foundation - Interview

Peter Barton, a pioneer in the development of television home-shopping networks and a past president of Liberty Media, now the cable-content arm of AT&T, brings up old memories when he discusses his newly created nonprofit Privacy Foundation.

In conjunction with the University of Denver, the foundation researches and alerts consumers to digital encroachments on their private lives from TV, telephones and computers. It spreads its message largely through its Web site (www.privacyfoundation.org) and through media releases.

Barton is the primary financier behind the foundation and the DU Privacy Center -- to the tune of $10 million, although he said First Data Corp. also chipped in some cash to get started last July.

ColoradoBiz Editor Robert Schwab had a chance to talk to Barton about his latest venture. Much abbreviated, their conversation follows:

CB: WHAT IS THE PRIVACY FOUNDATION?

PB: THE PRIVACY FOUNDATION IS A RESPONSE TO AN OBSERVATION that alarmed me. I do a lot of survey work, and we kept picking up indications that people are increasingly inhibited about using libraries, the Internet, bookstores, any place where one would go to accumulate knowledge about things they don't know -- for fear that someone would mistake or take out of context an interest they had, and embarrass them.

This goes beyond pornography, this goes into the areas of reading political material, looking at certain scientific issues, looking at certain medical issues.

CB: So, what do you do about that?

PB: I thought, boy, this is really a serious problem. That's not the kind of attitude that has made this country a country of great thinkers.

What's important if you're going to have creative thought is to have a way of safely looking at, experiencing, feeling and touching new things. Have a safe place, like a backstage, where you can try out ideas, articulate new thoughts, tell jokes the way you would to a friend as opposed to the way you would in front of an open microphone.

Everyone thinks there's an open microphone in their life here.

CB: How do you close the mike?

PB: Well, I have always thought one of the great models for a campaign in this country was created when they told kids not to get into cars with strangers. All of a sudden, the woman who started that campaign when we were growing up empowered children. Until then, we were taught that whatever you were told by a grown-up, you do it and you do it unquestionably. Grown-up says, 'Get in the car,' you get in...