Amy Gajda, "Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy" (Viking, 2022)
b"Should everyone have privacy in their personal lives? Can privacy exist in a public place? Is there a right to be left alone, even in the United States?\\nThe battle between an individual\\u2019s right to privacy and the public\\u2019s right to know has been fought for centuries. You may be surprised to realize that the original framers were sensitive to the importance of privacy interests relating to sexuality and intimate life, but mostly just for the powerful and the privileged.\\nThe founders demanded privacy for all the wrong press-quashing reasons. Supreme Court jus\\xadtice Louis Brandeis famously promoted First Amend\\xadment freedoms but argued strongly for privacy too; and presidents from Thomas Jefferson through Don\\xadald Trump confidently hid behind privacy despite the public interest\\xa0in their lives.\\nToday privacy seems simultaneously under siege and surging. And that\\u2019s doubly dangerous, as author Amy Gajda argues. Too little privacy leaves ordinary people vulnerable to those who deal in and publish soul-crushing secrets. Too much means the famous and infamous can cloak themselves in secrecy and dodge accountability.\\xa0Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy\\xa0(Viking, 2022) carries us from the very start, when privacy concepts first entered American law and society, to now, when the law al\\xadlows a Silicon Valley titan to destroy a media site like Gawker out of spite. Muckraker Upton Sinclair, like Nellie Bly before him, pushed the envelope of privacy and propriety and then became a privacy advocate when journalists used the same techniques against him. By the early 2000s we were on our way to today\\u2019s full-blown crisis in the digital age, worrying that smartphones, webcams, basement publishers, and the forever internet had erased privacy completely.\\nRenee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network\\u2019s\\xa0Van Leer Jerusalem\\xa0Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs\\xa0here.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law"