I’ve been writing about privacy and surveillance on this site since 2013 when I first read Janna Malamud Smith’s book Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life. That spring and summer’s news was full of the name “Edward Snowden,” acronyms like “PRISM,” and code names like “XKeyscore.” While the mass media featured psychologists explaining how […]
The Components of Privacy—Defining the Beast
Today I bought Janna Malamud Smith’s Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life (2003) and will be sharing content and reflections on it going forward. The following quotes come from pages 27-41; in that section, Malamud Smith builds on Alan Westin’s 1967 definition of privacy as four-faced and composed of solitude, anonymity, reserve, and intimacy. I’ve bolded […]
