Book Review ~ The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America by Jeffrey Rosen
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Random House · 2000 · 274 pages · $24.95
Reviewed by Andrew Cohen
Privacy is not just the refuge of recluses or scoundrels. As Jeffrey Rosen shows, privacy serves vital personal and social functions. Unfortunately, changes in the law, cyberspace, and society have eroded a genuinely private sphere. In a detailed and engaging discussion, Rosen calls for developing more thoughtful ways of conceptualizing and protecting our privacy.
A law professor, Rosen helpfully discusses the relevant legal history. The scope of permissible searches has recently broadened in the service of the regulatory state. More recent investigations (such as those involving Bob Packwood, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Clinton) gratuitously exposed private papers and records of book purchases and video rentals to public scrutiny. Rosen proposes a narrowing of state surveillance of our affairs and letting informal social norms handle most cases of inappropriate conduct. By viewing the most egregious violations as tort invasions of privacy instead of sexual harassment, we could insulate third parties from undue liability and prevent unnecessary disclosure.
On the technological front, companies track our online activities and network servers monitor our e-mails and Web-browsing histories. Computer tracking is often a blessing: targeted advertising can draw our attention to products we might like, and Web sites can maintain customer profiles to tailor content to our tastes. Rosen nevertheless finds unsettling the prospect of invasive surveillance by businesses or governments. It seems misguided, however, to complain that employers may monitor employees’ activities and stop them from using company resources to browse Internet pornography. We should use our own computers on our own time.
Admittedly, things are not always so simple. As Monica Lewinsky found out, personal computer files thought deleted can be recovered. Rosen claims that new technologies have thus decreased the control we have over self-disclosure, but he is not quite right here. Technology empowers us to be as private as we would like. Rosen himself applauds emerging technologies that promise enhanced anonymity and security in our Internet activities, such as encryption, self-deleting e-mails, or anonymous Web browsing. That most of us do not bother with such measures shows not decreased privacy but instead an increased willingness to waive our claims to privacy.
Rosen rightly stresses that privacy is not just an issue of what is protected by the state or from the state. He speaks of weakening informal norms of reticence and nondisclosure. While it is true that we have varying tolerances for disclosure, there must be some room for us to decide just how much to disclose and to whom. Rosen casts privacy as “the ability to protect ourselves from being judged out of context by controlling the conditions under which we reveal personal information to others.” He is particularly concerned about shortening attention spans. Absent healthy privacy norms, he worries, people will misjudge us based on incomplete or misleading information.
By calling for creative new norms to define and protect privacy, Rosen avoids what F. A. Hayek calls the “constructivist fallacy” in which planners legislate single solutions to social problems. Hayek believed instead that dispersed knowledge and decentralized decisions are better equipped to preserve liberty and social stability. Rosen views the appropriate legal reforms as just one aspect of broader social reforms. As he insightfully notes, using state power to regulate norms of privacy may encourage exactly the sort of busybody temperament we hope to curtail. Persons can often negotiate among themselves what different and context-sensitive norms shall govern self-disclosure.
Privacy affords a crucial control over self-disclosure. Privacy gives grounds for people not to attend to, search for, or disclose their differences. Different-minded persons can then interact productively while avoiding unnecessary conflicts. More sharply, Rosen rightly notes that a genuinely private sphere is vital for fostering the sense of intimacy that underlies close friendships and personal development.
The Unwanted Gaze is an important discussion of the function and evolution of privacy norms. My only quibble is that Rosen defines privacy too narrowly. While it is true that people wish to be judged in context, he takes this interest as central to a conception of privacy. As the book itself shows, however, privacy has more to do with protecting and respecting nondisclosure in general. How others judge us is often beside the point. What seems central is that we simply do not care for others to know of certain details about our lives. Rosen helps us to see that by confining everyone to what is their proper business, the boundaries we define and protect with privacy allow for individuals to define and live lives of their own.
Andrew Cohen is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma.
