http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/weekinreview/15LOHR.html?todaysheadlines=&pagewanted=print JUL 15, 2001 A Protective Path Paved in Granola By STEVE LOHR o understand the state of play for privacy in the digital age, it helps to look at environmentalism as it was taking shape in the late 1960's. At the time, there was a growing concern about the environment. The politics were reactive and grass-roots, led initially by activist groups rather than traditional politicians. The economic tradeoffs were difficult to measure and a subject of much debate. Individual cases of serious pollution caused alarm, but the environmental issue also mattered in a broader sense, affecting "quality of life." Today, privacy seems to be on a similar trajectory. Polls show that people are increasingly worried about it. The main focus of public anxiety is the use of personal information that can be collected and tracked over the Internet. But there are also qualms about new tools of surveillance - digital video cameras and special software - that the police are using to scan crowds for criminals, as was done at the Super Bowl in January and began in Tampa a few weeks ago. It remains unclear whether privacy will become an issue with anything like the political resonance and momentum of the environment. It has no oil-covered birds or dying seals to fire public passions. There are worrying episodes, like the accidental distribution of the e-mail addresses of 600 Prozac users by Eli Lilly recently. But most of the anxiety is anticipatory, about what use might be made of vast databases being assembled online or the identifying numbers in Microsoft's software or Intel's microchips. Thoughtful, often disturbing, books have been written on privacy, but none have approached the impact of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in 1962. Still, there are enough similarities to make some comparisons illuminating. The core concept in each case has evolved over time, though the environment is much further along. As a policy issue, the environment became synonymous with health and safety. But privacy is still an elastic term that means very different things to different people. Jeffrey Rosen, the author of "The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America" (Random House, 2000), notes that privacy is an "amorphous concept" that can mean anonymity, secrecy, personal control, security, inaccessibility, even reticence. AND like the environment, there is a social side to privacy that extends beyond the cost-benefit analysis of economics. The widespread use of digital video surveillance, Mr. Rosen warns, is an example. "You transform the character of public spaces by putting cameras everywhere," he said. Then there is the problem of assessing tradeoffs, a tricky reckoning in both cases. But with the environment, the variables at least are apparent and concrete - wealth and production, health and safety. Figuring the tradeoffs surrounding privacy is more subtle: the free flow of some personal information means lower marketing costs, lower prices and more consumer choice. And the point of much new technology is convenience. Who wants to spend an extra 20 seconds to encrypt a message? Like the environmental activists of decades ago, privacy groups are pushing for legislation to establish basic national standards and practices, including at Senate hearings last week, just as environmental groups helped prod Congress into enacting the Clean Air Act of 1970. They even pluck their metaphors from the environment, warning of the danger of a potential "privacy Chernobyl" or "privacy oil spills." But as with the environment, legislation will probably come only after there is broad grass-roots support, legitimate leadership and agreement on what should be done. "Various entities are competing for institutional competence and legitimacy," observed Andrew L. Shapiro, the author of "The Control Revolution" (Public Affairs, 1999), which examines the Internet's social impact. And there is no real consensus, he says, on how to protect privacy. Science and technology helped bring environmental dangers to light, as biological research detailed the health effects of pollution. Some analysts say the Internet has cast light on the lax information-handling practices of the past. Merchants have been selling credit-card data for years. The sure evidence of that is the annoying arrival of junk mail every day. Technology accelerates the practice and also makes it more visible. What was unknown in the past now seems to be exploitation. COMPUTER technology is making information and images easy and inexpensive to collect, sift and transmit. In a study released last week, the Privacy Foundation, an educational and research organization, found that 14 million employees - over a third of the nation's workers who use the Internet on the job - have their Web use and e- mail under constant surveillance. The companies that use the surveillance software say they are monitoring productivity, checking for objectionable communications like racist or sexist e-mails and guarding against the loss of trade secrets. All those considerations, notes Andrew Schulman, a researcher at the Privacy Foundation, could apply to telephone communications as well. Such surveillance, however, would be too cumbersome and expensive. But the software for computer surveillance costs companies and some government agencies $5 to $10 a year per worker. Not only is it easier to collect personal information; it's also easier to sell it. An online merchant can track a visitor's every mouse click, using "cookies." Those clicks can reveal a person's interests and buying habits. And there is a brisk business in selling that information to other marketers. "There is already a market in information on you," observed Hal R. Varian, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The trouble is, you aren't a participant in that market." Economists analyze privacy through the same prism as the environment, trying to weigh a discrete economic benefit to a marketer (like the polluting producer) against the more elusive cost of an individual's loss of privacy (a person breathing dirtier air). The sale of personal data to third parties, in economic terms, is an "externality." That is, the seller can ignore the costs, because they are born by someone else - the individual whose information is sold. Externalities are a big part of environmental economics. And just as there have been efforts to develop markets in pollution rights, Kenneth C. Laudon, a professor at New York University's Stern school of business, has proposed a "national information market," intended to give individuals "fair compensation for the use of information about themselves." Its contours may resemble the environment, but the privacy issue will likely elicit a much milder policy response. Eventually, laws curbing junk e-mail and setting basic standards for collecting and using online data are a good bet. But sweeping, environmental-style regulation is doubtful. The issue is different, and so are the times. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]