| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : APRIL 26, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Too Private? THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY By Amitai Etzioni Basic Books 280pp $25 In March, a software expert revealed that documents created using Microsoft Corp.'s Office software contained serial numbers allowing them to be traced to the machine on which they were created. When privacy advocates yelped, Microsoft quickly released software to let people expunge the numbers from their documents. But the story didn't end there. A few weeks later, the same tracking system helped hunt down a New Jersey man suspected of unleashing a nasty computer virus named Melissa. Suddenly, the ability to trace files back to their creators didn't seem entirely bad. Maybe, some people felt, privacy has its limits. That is the argument of The Limits of Privacy, a new book by Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University. Etzioni has often written about the need to strike a balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, and he does so again here. His contention, in short: ''Although we cherish privacy in a free society, we also value other goods. Hence, we must address the moral, legal, and social issues that arise when serving the common good entails violating privacy.'' Etzioni spells out his ''communitarian'' philosophy in chapters on five hotly contended issues: mandatory testing of infants for HIV, which some say amounts to an invasion of the mother's privacy; the trade-off between sex offenders' privacy and children's safety; the government's wish to be able to decipher encrypted messages; the virtues and vices of mandatory ID cards and gear such as fingerprint scanners; and, finally, individuals' ability to keep medical records private. Etzioni leans against privacy on all the issues except medical records. Here he concludes that invasion of medical-records privacy doesn't usually serve important social goals--and is mainly done by information-selling ''privacy merchants.'' Etzioni argues that while the public is perhaps overly sensitive to governmental violations of privacy, its defenses against violations by companies are ''surprisingly weak.'' He says privacy advocates are trapped in a paradox: ''Although they fear Big Brother most, they need to lean on him to protect privacy better from Big Buck.'' While much of The Limits of Privacy is devoted to heavily footnoted policy debates, Etzioni rises from wonkery in the final chapter to place privacy in a broader context. In the communitarian spirit, he argues that societal norms are best enforced informally by friends, neighbors, and fellow members of voluntary associations. He says those people can't do their valuable busybody work if the legal walls of privacy are raised too high. Etzioni isn't the first to favor limits on privacy. Science-fiction writer David Brin did it more entertainingly last year in The Transparent Society. The difference is that Brin also argued for invading the privacy of government--putting police under surveillance, for example. Etzioni regards democratic government more as friend than foe. Whether you agree may depend on whether you share his communitarian spirit in the first place. BY PETER COY _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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