None of Your Damn Business – Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age - Hardcover

Cappello, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022655774X ISBN 13: 9780226557748

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2019

Synopsis

You can't pass through an airport customs checkpoint without having your picture taken and your fingertips scanned, that information stored away in an archive you'll never see. Nor can you use your home's smart technology without occasionally experiencing uncertainty about what, exactly, that technology might do with what you've been sharing about your shopping habits and media choices. Every day, Americans surrender their private information to entities that claim to have their best interests in mind, in exchange for a promise of safety or simply the sake of convenience. This trade-off has long been taken for granted, but the extent of its nefariousness has recently become much more clear. As Lawrence Cappello's None of Your Damn Business reveals, the problem is not so much that data will be used in ways we don't want, but rather how willing we have been to have our information used, abused, and sold right back to us. In this startling book, Cappello shows that this state of affairs was not the inevitable byproduct of technological progress. He targets key moments from the past hundred and thirty years of US history when privacy was central to battles over journalistic freedom, national security, surveillance, big data, and reproductive rights. As he makes dismayingly clear, Americans have had numerous opportunities to protect the public good while simultaneously safeguarding our information, and we've squandered those opportunities every time. The wide range of the debates presented here illustrates how, despite America's long history of praising individual freedom, we actually have one of the weakest systems for privacy protection in the developed world. None of Your Damn Business is a rich and provocative survey of an alarming topic that only grows more relevant with each fresh outrage of trust betrayed.

About this title

Review:

"'What is it we fear we're losing?' Cappello asks in his brilliant study of privacy in America. Is there any timelier question? Thoroughly researched and deftly told, None of Your Damn Business is a history of privacy written for and about Wall Street and Main Street, government and the courts, intelligence operatives and digital entrepreneurs, current and future citizens. It deserves our full attention."--David Nasaw "author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy "

"Privacy, or the intimate politics of power, is becoming more important with each day. If there is no privacy, there can be no resistance and thus no social progress. In this fine book, Cappello makes a lucid case for why we need what Justice Louis Brandeis called 'the right to be left alone.'"--Christian Parenti "author of The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror "

"Tracing a century of debates on topics from national security to reproductive rights, None of Your Damn Business offers a lively, instructive account of Americans' ambivalent (and often muddled) thinking about privacy."--Sarah Igo "author of The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America "

"A thorough account of privacy struggles that draws on deep research to reveal that the privacy dilemma dates back more than a century and has roiled American life through two world wars, the New Deal, the Cold War, and the post 9/11 era. . . . None of Your Damn Business provides excellent background information for citizens concerned with the erosion of privacy rights, as well as for government officials and legal professionals positioned to act upon privacy laws that protect citizens while providing necessary oversight."--Foreword Reviews

"Cappello's puckish sensibilities and engaging style dovetail wittily with his well-chosen and thoughtful examples, resulting in an academic text that any reader can appreciate. This book is a must-read for legislators, policymakers, and anyone curious about the ways their privacy could potentially be compromised by the government, the media, or data brokers."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Lawrence Cappello is assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 022655774X
• ISBN 13: 9780226557748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352