Where's the connection between President Bush and a woman screaming at her spouse while on hold? It's closer than you'd think. Both are victims of surreptitious recording of private conversations. And this phenomenon, while limited, is a symptom of a larger change taking place in society.
Bush was tape-recorded, without his knowledge, by a companion; years later, the tapes were leaked to the press. The man who did this, Doug Wead, is, in my mind, a jerk; he's in the same league as Linda Tripp. However, he's not alone.
A New York Times article last month wrote about the phenomenon of call center monitoring unexpectedly picking up things callers did on hold. "This call may be monitored for quality control" meant that even customers on hold were being recorded and monitored - yelling at the kids, profanity and all the rest of the things people do when they think nobody's listening.
When I started writing this, I thought I would call on Congress to pass a law outlawing the recording of any conversation unless both parties are able to opt out of it. That would mean, among other things, no more surreptitious recording of private matters, and that you could call customer service without letting private companies monitor your home life while you were kept waiting. But this isn't a solution. Like plenty of other functions, call recording is a global business now. A U.S. law would have no impact on most companies; it would just inconvenience U.S. firms, giving an advantage to overseas competition.
As goes call monitoring, so goes the society. As time goes on, more and more information is revealed, and people have less and less control over it. Twenty years ago, electronic payment - and the tracking of purchases that entails - was a novelty. Now, anyone getting my debit card bill sees a detailed list of my purchases-more than I would want people knowing. As technology improves, it becomes ever easier to gather information about people, and the law is essentially unable to keep up. The conflict - between groups that want access to previously private activities and consumers/citizens who want to stop them - is one of the more interesting conflicts taking place today.
Essentially, though, it's a one-sided conflict. Privacy advocates have won a few battles here and there, but they've all be reactive - stopping cameras here, requiring opt-in to sell information there, and so on. In almost every area, as time goes on, more and more personal information becomes available.
This is the kind of change that doesn't get noticed quickly. It will take some time for public awareness to catch up. But eventually, people will realize that almost every aspect of life is stored somewhere. Every time you use a debit card, walk in a public park or use the Internet, you might be watched. With a little deduction, for instance, anyone inspecting my records could construct a detailed profile of me. In fact, Amazon.com already does so - I've bought several books at their suggestion. Amazon, a company I hadn't even heard of a decade ago, knows more about me than most of my professors. It knows I'm into science fiction, that I'm a political nerd, that I want a job in D.C., that I have a significant other, her name and address ... the list goes on.
What will be interesting is society's reaction when people begin to realize that their personal habits are no longer their own. What would it be like, living in a society in which people know that almost no interaction is guaranteed to be private? One reaction might be shock and outrage, a demand for new privacy protections, and so on. But this is unlikely to happen. Any such protections would demand a huge level of coordination among nations, and even if that's accomplished, it's exceedingly rare to be able to regulate away the advance of technology. The more likely thing is that people will learn to live with it.
What will a society look like without the expectation of privacy? Will people alter their behavior if they know that everything they buy might be recorded? Will it impact their decisions? How will behavior change? All these questions spring to mind.
But what's certain is that we will find out. As time and technology march on, the very concept of what's private is being redefined. It's time for people to realize it.
