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Title: The Costs of Privacy: Surveillance and Reputation in America (Social Institutions and Social Change) by Steven L. Nock ISBN: 0202304558 Publisher: Aldine de Gruyter Pub. Date: February, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4

Rating: 4
Summary: Surveillance and the Privacy Paradox
Comment: You can find a lot of books that talk about protecting privacy, hiding assets, disguising identity, and keeping your life secret. But not many people have thought deeply about why you might want to do this and what the cost to society would be if all its members were anonymous strangers.

This book makes a valuable contribution to the increasingly shrill privacy debate, offering a well-reasoned explanation of why we need surveillance, in terms of knowledge of others and their credentials, in order to establish trust. In other words, the paradox between wanting institutions and organizations to treat us with respect as individuals, to be sensitive to our particular wants and needs, while we remain unwilling to hare with others what those needs are.

Nock highlights the fact that we will not trust others without knowledge of them, so information about others is required before meaningful interaction can be sustained. He examines the needs we have to interact with others at various levels of trust to show the levels of knoweldge about others which such trust requires.

While some of the language in this book applies a philosophical twist to terms we are accusotmed to using in more concrete ways, it is wonderfully thought-provoking. I rate it a "must read" if you want to have a well-rounded perspective on privacy in the information age.

Rating: 4
Summary: Handy book for understanding things affecting privacy.
Comment: Costs of Privacy, first of all, is not a book advocating privacy per se or helping people to preserve it. In fact, it present some claims that can be jolting to people concerned about diminishing privacy.

But these claims are helpful for understanding some of the practices that affect privacy, including credentials such as drivers licenses and ordeals such as drug tests and polygraphs. Nock gives historical background on the changing views of privacy. Seeing how various practices came to be helps us to better understand how to make our way through the ongoing tussle for the future of privacy.

Basic claims:
Privacy is diffent than secrecy. The distinction is based upon whether or not the info is legitimate to keep from disclosure.
Privacy as we know exists only in a society where there are many strangers. The drawback is the difficulty of establishing reputations and trustworthiness. Anonymity (not knowing one another)is one of the costs of privacy.
Therefore, various means of surveillence, including credentials and ordeals, are used in attempt to establish some means of determining trustworthiness. In fact, surveillence of some kinds is needed to preserve privacy. (!!!)

Towards the end of the book, Nock examines genetic testing and speculates upon its impact on privacy.

Very useful book. While I don't agree with everything Nock says, it is a book I use frequently in my online writings about privacy and information issues.

J.D. Abolins
Meyda Online - Dimensions of Privacy page.