The Right to Be Let Alone: Privacy in the United States
Based on other books that I had encountered in the Reanimation Library, I expected Gerald S. Snyder’s The Right to Be Let Alone: Privacy in the United States, to be an off-the-grid, back-to-nature, survivalists musings on privacy, brimming with paranoid attitudes such as “get off my land” and “don’t trust the banks.” To my surprise The Right to Be Let Alone traces the history of privacy in America and questions its future in the face of new technologies. Somewhat surprisingly, this book should probably be on our bedside tables right now given the National Security Agency revelations of 2013, constant data breaches, and the United States’ lack of government regulation in the realm of personal data privacy.
Using explicit legal and technological examples, Snyder describes how privacy in America is eroding as new technology makes it easier to collect, store, and analyze our personal information, thoughts, and ideas. In the final chapter, Snyder plays oracle and predicts what the world of technology and privacy might look like in the year 2000 (twenty five years into the future from Snyder’s perspective). It is astonishing how accurate his predictions are.
