The Assault On Privacy by Arthur R. Miller
The Assault On Privacy by Arthur R. Miller
The Assault On Privacy by Arthur R. Miller
Volume 20
Article 10
Issue 4 1971
Recommended Citation
Charles R. Ashman, The Assault on Privacy by Arthur R. Miller, 20 DePaul L. Rev. 1062 (1971)
Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol20/iss4/10
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BOOK REVIEW
1. Warren & Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 5 (1898). For
a comprehensive treatment, see Forkosch, Freedom of Information in the United
States, 20 DE PAUL L. REV. 1 (1971).
2. MILLER, ASSAULT ON PRIVACY, 259 (1970).
3. COOLEY, TORTS, 29 (2d ed. 1888).
4. Kalven, Privacy in Tort Law-Were Warren and Brandeis Wrong?, 31 LAW
AND CONTEMP. PROBLEMS 326 (1966); WESTIN, PRIVACY AND FREEDOM (1967).
5. Fried, Privacy, 77 YALE L.J. 475 (1968); Beaney, The Right To Privacy and
American Law, 31 LAW AND CONTEMP. PROBLEMS 253 (1966).
1062
1971] BOOK REVIEW 1063
As "Orwell's 1984" becomes only a little more than a decade away,
"Big Brother" becomes less science fiction and more a relevant facet of
life in the most advanced technological society history has known. One
wonders if a world that watches its ambassador-astronauts putter on the
moon can be less watchful of its populace at ground level.
Apprehension over the computer's threat to personal privacy seems par-
ticularly warranted when one begins to consider the possibility of using the
new technology to further various private and governmental surveillance
activities. One obvious use of the computer's storage and retrieval capac-
ity along these lines is the development of a "record prison" by the con-
tinuous accumulation of dossier-type material on people over a long period
of time. The possibility of constructing a sophisticated data center cap-
able of generating a comprehensive womb-to-tomb dossier on every indi-
vidual and transmitting it to a wide range of data users over a national net-
work is one of the most disturbing threats of the cybernetic revolution.6
Police on every level and military intelligence agencies have gained
access to various communications outlets and are compiling a mass of com-
puterized files on millions of law abiding yet "suspect" Americans. 7 The
present administration's justification that an era of assassinations, violent
dissent and civil disorder requires the government to accumulate dossiers
on "people of interest" is not holding up to the man in the Senate or the
man in the street. This issue as well as related spying tactics may well be
the final straw in harnessing, if not breaking the back of J. Edgar Hoover's
perennial personal reign of the F.B.I.
The threat of police-state tactics has raised critical constitutional ques-
tions and the computer-critics have achieved formal congressional inquiry
into the indiscriminate collection and use of information on noncriminals
for whatever purpose.
Computers are now fed such miscellaneous data as details from elemen-
tary and secondary schools as well as college records; aptitude, intelli-
gence and personality tests results; tax returns, census findings and social
security information; insurance applications, hospital records and military
files; credit bureau records; employment reports; voter registration and
court dockets; airline, hotel and automobile rental listings and credit card
applications and files. Although not all sources have reached the sophisti-
cated intrusion level of census information which is elicited under threat of
criminal penalty, 8 our courts have upheld the Bureau's growing discretion
in the proliferation of census questionnaires for the dubious needs of fed-
eral agency planning. 9
* MR. ASHMAN is former Dean of the Riverside University Law School, Direc-
tor of the Belli Foundation, and author of the book, THE SUPREME COURT IS
DYING.