The right to control information, access and visibility is perceived as an important cultural value in the United States, closely linked to individualism and freedom. While debated in relation to public actions and rights to knowledge claimed by governments and social institutions like schools, issues of privacy also permeate the family where individual social spaces (separate bedrooms and control of information by children without informing parents) are also important to family dynamics. Privacy also shapes interpersonal relations in terms of topics commonly discussed and avoided—one may be warned not to bring up money or religion in social gatherings, while business interviews face strict limits on information that may not be asked (marital status, criminal history not directly relevant to the position, religion, etc.). Questions of privacy in the information age have become especially important with regards to the data gathered by bureaucracies and corporations and how these data are shared and used.

Rights to privacy have been worked out in complex ways throughout American history Provisions of the Bill of Rights testify to the rights to protect the home from quartering troops (3rd Amendment), unreasonable search and seizure (4th Amendment) and rights to protect the individual from testifying against him or herself (5th Amendment). Provisions dealing with freedom and gun ownership also establish private rights, while dealing with the extension of private beliefs and action into public forums. In the twentieth century Supreme Court decisions extended federal rights to the states. The right to privacy has also been evoked in court cases that have protected birth control, abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973) and euthanasia; it has been argued less successfully in areas such as pornography and sexuality (especially when rights of children are called into play). These issues are also continually debated in issues ranging from police rights to use materials “in plain sight” to control of garbage.

Nonetheless, many Americans feel that their privacy has been threatened in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by records gathered and kept by schools, governments (Internal Rev-enue as well as FBI), medical providers and corporations.

Storage and access to such records through computers and the Internet, as well as the permeability of electronic communication have increased tension. Corporate mergers also raise questions of data flows within multipurpose businesses. There is often a strong ambivalence, too, in these areas as surveillance technologies have become accepted to control crime, yet are challenged when they extend into private spaces (changing rooms, bathrooms) or even control of activity in public spaces (private choices to participate in public events).

Specific laws have been enacted to safeguard medical records and credit materials, but violations of these expectations are constantly revealed by media. The turmoil of legal cases involving the Clinton White House has also heightened questions about the private lives of public persons, as well as the ability of the powerful to have access to records that are presumed to be confidential. One striking index of public sensitivity to these issues has been the reluctance of many to complete questions of the 2000 census, including Republican politicians speaking out against this legally established duty.

Mass media have heightened sensitivity to the manipulation of private data as well.

Often, this is the stuff of crime novels, programs and movies, although these issues may be equally apparent in medical dramas. The impact of the potential manipulation of private information also underscores dystopic visions like The Net (1995).