THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY

When George Orwell looked ahead at mid-century to predict the rise of totalitarian regimes, he saw the complete abrogation of personal privacy as their crowning achievement. Nothing about our personal lives could be kept from centralized governments in the year 1984 as it followed us with the new technology of television. Citizens would be forced to watch government-mandated programs, and government agents would watch them back through personal video cameras. Every move of every person could be tracked and recorded. The image was terrifying. How trivial the capacity of television to intrude on our lives has now become in comparison to that of a personal computer connected to the Internet. How inconsequentia l a video image of our daily activities soon may seem in comparison to a genetic proŽ le that deŽ nes our very being. Vast amounts of personal information are fed into networks of computers to be processed, analyzed, and sent around the country and around the world, often to be combined with other data stored on other computers. Much of this information we readily enter ourselves from the comfort of our homes when we make purchases, seek medical advice, or check Ž nancial records over the Internet. The result is a detailed picture of us that can be kept as a permanent record by entities of which we are not even aware. America was founded on a tradition of rebellion against government power and of resistance to government control over our lives. Historically, nothing has threatened the spirit of America more than unchecked centralized government authority in a world like that of Orwell’s 1984. When the spirit