"PRIVATE" is a ringing word in the American vocabulary, whether it stands for a tangible line drawn against the world ("Private, Keep Out") or for an intangible circle surrounding the individual ("My private life is my own"). The privacy of a citizen's home and thoughts is the greatest distinction of a democracy from a totalitarian state, symbolized most vividly by the curtain on the voting booth.
The early Americans were so secure in their sense of privacy that they seldom gave it a thought—the Constitution does not contain the term. If anything, most felt they had more privacy than they needed in their scattered farms, and made up for it by frequent gatherings at taverns and hostels, where their gregariousness shocked visiting Europeans. Today, just when the affluent society should be on the verge of providing every American with as much or as little privacy as he chooses, there is more justified alarm over the state of privacy than at any time in U.S. history.
The threat is twofold. One area involves deliberate efforts to get information about the individual, often by technical means that have become starkly efficient. The problem raised is legal and moral: When is such snooping justified in the interests of society and how should it be controlled?
The second area involves mainly involuntary intrusions caused by the immense overcrowding and the ever-growing interdependence of civilization. The problem raised is psychological and social: How can life be conducted so that the individual will have a secure base of personal peace and dignity amid the vortex of modern existence?
Bugs & Bras
The ease of electronic snooping has become part of folklore. Half-fascinated and half-irritated, Americans know that today the walls not only have ears but sometimes eyes, any telephone can be linked to a tape recorder, pictures can be taken in the dark of the darkest bedrooms. Such practices now range far afield from criminal matters into divorce cases, income tax disputes, industrial espionage. One female operative working in San Francisco for the Internal Revenue Service wore a tiny transmitter concealed in her brassiere. She would encourage her prey to put his head on her bosom, thereby assuring perfect reception. Thus does Government bureaucracy these days re-create the world of James Bond.
Scientists forecast even more startling ways of snooping, including a device that could pick up the "sympathetic vibrations" of voices in a room blocks away. Also to be reckoned with are the "mind drugs," which make possible the ultimate invasion of a man's privacy: penetration of his brain.
Not that all snooping relies on dazzling modern means; some is downright oldfashioned. Certain Government agencies have an arrangement with the Washington, D.C., garbagemen to collect the garbage of people under investigation, and deliver it for grubby examination.