I just read the section of Solove’s The Digital Person about the records that the US government holds on its citizens and the privacy problems that arise from the fact that so many of them are public.
Of course the meaning of “public” changes when rather than seek out a particular piece of information from a government office you need only go to the Internet and a do a search that will turn up lots of aggregated data on a particular person. This allows for easy speculative searching. It also violates the principles established by the courts that data is publicly available where it is not just sought for idle curiosity or to cause scandal.
Also check out my favourites the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s article Is Your Printer Spying on You?. They have lists of what printers do and don’t print tracking dots.
I also read a New York Times article called “As Surveillance Cameras Peer, Some Wonder if They Also Pry” by David M. Halbfinger. This is from 1998, and discusses the proliferation of security, traffic, and weather cameras and the lack of control over how they were used or where they were placed.
I’ve noticed that people here seem to think of London as the example of the terrible things that happen if you allow security cameras everywhere. It’s kind of interesting, because it doesn’t seem as contentious there as here. Though you do hear people speaking against surveillance cameras in the UK from time to time.
