Privy Counsel.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Attorney and journalist Robert Ellis Smith - Brief Article - Interview

Robert Ellis Smith, an attorney and journalist, has had privacy on his mind for a long time. Since 1974, he's edited the very useful newsletter Privacy Journal (www.townonline.com/privacyjournal) which reports all the twists and turns of the legal and technological changes that affect our ability to keep ourselves to ourselves. His most recent book is Ben Franklin's Web Site: Privacy and Curiosity from Plymouth Rock to the Internet (Privacy Journal), an engaging and exhaustive historical survey of American privacy law and American attitudes toward privacy. Associate Editor Brian Doherty interviewed Smith by phone in July.

Q: Your book documents how laws that define privacy are constantly shifting. What's your definition of privacy?

A: The attempt by an individual to control the collection, dissemination, and use of their personal information. Privacy is also the quest for some safe haven, a physical space away from interruption and accountability and distraction.

Q: What are today's most pressing privacy concerns?

A: Overuse of Social Security numbers, credit report in accuracy, vulnerability of medical records, and surveillance at work, whether video surveillance or monitoring of Internet browsing and telephone calls. Also, video surveillance in the community at large. We have no legal limits on electronic surveillance if it's video without sound, whether by private agents or a municipality. Electronic surveillance laws only cover audio.

Q: Which do folks fear more: governmental or private assaults on privacy?

A: People used to worry more about the government until the mid-'80s. Then they discovered that threats came equally from both. People feel a loss of autonomy when information they've left on a Web site is used to manipulate them, or...