Publishing: Newsbook on Privacy

Some of today’s best journalists do not appear in daily papers or on TV or in magazines. Major issues are often so complex that the only way to deal with them is in book form, and book publishers have been concentrating more and more on lengthy treatment of topical matters. Privacy and Freedom, a thoughtful assessment by Alan F. Westin of the growing threat to the traditional American right to be left alone, is a case in point.

Westin, a 37-year-old Columbia University lawyer and political scientist, is regarded by many as the leading U.S. specialist on privacy. His writings on the subject have been cited by the Supreme Court and used as a basis for legislation. In his new book published by Atheneum, Westin insists that the right to privacy must nolonger be taken for granted. The mounting psychological and electronic assault on private lives poses a threat that cannot be exaggerated, he points out, and “we have only a few years of lead time before the problem will outgrow our capacity to apply controls.”

Mechanical Spies. Sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and financed by $75,000 worth of Carnegie Corporation grants, Privacy and Freedom took four years to write. It involved Westin in hundreds of interviews, thousands of hours of research through newspapers, court records and books, ranging from Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Just as thoroughly, Westin has compiled a catalogue of electronic bugging devices, wiretaps and mechanical spies that will surprise even those who think they are up on the subject. Items currently available: TV cameras small enough to fit in a vest pocket with an “eye” the width of a cigarette; sniper-scopes that can spot a man at 700 yards in the dark; cameras and recorders that turn on when anyone enters a room or starts talking; an ultrasonic wave that can snoop on a conversation by picking up dim voice vibrations in window glass.

Many of the surveillance devices are in extremely wide use. Businesses spy on assembly-line workers and executives alike. Colleges listen in on dormitory rooms. Blackmail-minded brothel owners look in on their customers. Police hunt homosexuals with ceiling cameras installed in men’s rest rooms. Cops also bug hoods, while hoods bug cops. Some towns have experimented with closed-circuit TV cameras on the streets; using street lights, police can watch at night for crimes. District attorneys have been known to record lawyer-defendant conferences, and everyone believes that everyone’s wiretapping everyone else in Washington, D.C. One Capitol telephone line, reports Westin, had eight taps on it and was so sapped of power that normal conversations were inaudible.

Anti-Bugging. Westin also warns about the polygraph (lie detector) and personality tests that are sometimes required for employment. Worse still, he feels, could be the impact of computers. Already Americans leave a detailed trail of vital data about themselves—insurance questionnaires, loan applications, census forms, employment applications, tax returns, military and school records. If all of these are gathered into one Orwellian information bank, as some officials have proposed, a man’s life may well be available at the punch of a button. When all financial transactions begin to be carried out by a universal credit-card and automatic-bill paying system, Westin says that hardly a corner of a man’s life will be left dark.

There are ways to fight back, of course, and Westin discusses several, including the development of anti-bugging devices (which is lagging) and executive action (which has been led by President Johnson’s restrictions on wire tapping in all federal agencies). The most progress probably has been made in the courts. Though Westin accurately predicts a landmark Supreme Court decision, the book was already on the presses when the court struck down the New York eavesdropping law and barred electronic bugging in all but the most narrowly described circumstances (TIME,June 23).

New legislation is the ultimate solution, in the author’s opinion. Though he rejects suggestions of a constitutional amendment, he proposes laws carefully drawn to limit access to personal-data computer banks, to end both public and private use of lie detectors and personality tests unless the subject freely consents and to confine surveillance to what can be actually seen and heard with the unaided human eye and ear. Well aware that society sometimes has legitimate reasons for snooping, Westin would allow exceptions under specific conditions.

Westin would like to believe the time is ripe for such laws, and he says in conclusion that “American society now seems ready to face the impact of science on privacy.” He points with hope to the fact that both far left and right share a distaste for the electronic invaders. But his reliance on the public may be too optimistic. As he indicates elsewhere in the book, public concern has blown hot over subliminal advertising, but has been only lukewarm in other areas. It shows no real sign of having changed.