She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.
I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera.
Those familiar with the brilliant Simon and Garfunkel song will recognize the lyrics. They jumped out at me in a recent listening because of what strikes me as a focus on privacy.
More below.
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Privacy has been a favorite topic of mine dating from the West Wing Days. It appeared in the 9th episode on Season One (11/24/99), when the Bartlet Administration was given the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice. The conventional wisdom felt that a relatively conservative Democratic jurist would be the pick. Please keep in mind, that episode first aired on 11/24/99, when even in the country at large, things were less divided than they are today. (Even so, in Episode 17 of Season 5, the ultra-conservative justice under consideration for another nomination described the deterioration in the process of nominating Supremes by saying it’s all mediocre candidates from now on.)
After an animated back and forth, Bartlet, Sam and Toby send the judge out the door, to converse in private.
TOBY With a guaranteed confirmation we're sending out the door based on a 30-year-old paper, which by the way, no one will know about but us.
BARTLET You don't think the guy who called Sam wouldn't know how to call a senator's office?
TOBY Mr. President, if this is really about abortion, we already talked about...
SAM It's not about abortion. It's about the next 20 years. Twenties and thirties, it was the role of government. Fifties and sixties, it was civil rights. The next two decades, it's gonna be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cellphones. I'm talking about health records, and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on a will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?
The question about privacy in the Simon and Garfunkel song, by contrast, came up in 1968. Imagine! Anxiety about a camera hidden in a bowtie!
The remarkable thing about Sam’s prescience, ‘the next two decades’ will be about privacy … I think it underestimated the severity of the debate quite severely. Camera technology in 1968 may have allowed for the placement of a camera in a bowtie, but today, miniaturization makes it possible to place a camera literally anywhere, with no gabardine suit to give it away.
Your face can be identified and tracked in most any public place. Your automobile can be tracked, your cellphone even more easily. Your conversations may be listened to and recorded, your every purchase not made with cash (and even most of those, if someone is intent on tracking it). Cameras could record your every utterance, if someone wishes it. Everything you say in your car, in traffic.
What will happen when cameras in the workplace can see everything you do every moment of every day? Everything you say, everything you write? That technology exists and is in use in some places already.
What will happen to spontaneity? I think it will die. How spontaneous can you be if you know unnamed and unknown people are seeing, hearing and recording everything you do? It has already been two decades since Sam’s speech to the president. I don’t think we are even close to the beginning of the privacy fight. And I think it will go on far longer than two decades, maybe longer than two centuries. Where will our collective soul be in that time?
However, I do agree with Sam’s assessment, ‘what could be more fundamental than this?’ Just some of my ‘private’ thoughts on privacy.
On to tonight’s comments!
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