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Seek and hide : the tangled history of the right to privacy / Amy Gajda.

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323.4480973 G145s

Privacy, Right of -- United States.

9781984880741 (hc.)

xxii, 376 p. ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-357) and index.

"Is privacy under deadly siege, or actually surging? The answer is both, but that's doubly dangerous, as legal expert Amy Gajda proves. Too little privacy means that unwanted exposure by those who deal in and publish secrets. Too much means the famous and infamous can cloak themselves in secrecy and shut down inquiry, and return us to the time before movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo opened eyes to hidden truths. 'Seek and Hide' carries us from the Gilded Age, when the concept of a right to privacy by name first entered American law and society, to now, when the law allows a Silicon Valley titan like Peter Thiel to destroy a media site like Gawker out of spite. Disturbingly, she shows that the original concern was not about intrusions into the lives of ordinary folks, but that the wealthy and powerful should not have their dignity assaulted by the wretches of the popular press like Nellie Bly. The modern right is anchored in a landmark 1890 essay by Louis Brandeis before he joined the Supreme Court, where he continued his instrumental support for the "privacies of life." By the 1990s we were on our way to today's full-blown crisis of privacy in the digital age, from websites to webcams and the Forever Internet erasing our 'right to be forgotten.' Or does it? We stand today at another crossroads in which privacy is widely believed to be under assault from every direction by the anything-for-clicks business model and technology that can record and report our every move.'

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