"A delightful read for everyone in business, government, the legal professions, and academia who wants historical insights." />
"A superb account." --
Stanford Law Review"A superb overview. The organization of the material is both novel and exceptionally helpful, both as a solid read on its merits, as well as a handy reference tool. The book is scholarly and intellectual enough to serve as an academic reference, but clear and simple enough in its presentation to reach a wider audience." --2007 "Writer's Digest" International Self-Published Book Awards competition
"An all-fact fiesta. A must-read. To enhance your beach-reading experience, Smith does a fabulous job of explaining... --
Seattle Weekly"His numerous books are required reading for anyone concerned about the ongoing threats." --
Simson Garfinkel, in Database Nation, published by O'Reilly, 2000"Interesting and illuminating." --
Computer Security Report, June 2004, Columnist Rebecca Herold"Robert Ellis Smith's expose of privacy invasion will be one of the sleeper best-selling books..." --
William Safire, columnist, The New York Times, December 30, 1999"Still the best and most readable all-purpose introduction to privacy history, policy and law" --
DM News, July 5, 2004, Columnist Robert Gellman"The most practical of [the new privacy books], with its mix of readable history and sensible advice on what to do about your own privacy." --
Wall Street Journal (Robert Templer) Oct. 30, 2000"an engaging and exhaustive historical survey" --
Reason magazine, October 2000"A historical and anecdotal style that should appeal to readers of all kinds, from the casually curious to the legally sophisticated." --
The Federal Lawyer, August 2000 (Attorney Jeremiah S. Gutman)"A superb account." --
Stanford Law Review"A superb overview. The organization of the material is both novel and exceptionally helpful, both as a solid read on its merits, as well as a handy reference tool. The book is scholarly and intellectual enough to serve as an academic reference, but clear and simple enough in its presentation to reach a wider audience." --2007 "Writer's Digest" International Self-Published Book Awards competition
"An all-fact fiesta. A must-read. To enhance your beach-reading experience, Smith does a fabulous job of explaining. --
Seattle Weekly"His numerous books are required reading for anyone concerned about the ongoing threats." --
Simson Garfinkel, in Database Nation, published by O'Reilly, 2000"Interesting and illuminating." --
Computer Security Report, June 2004, Columnist Rebecca Herold"Privacy Journal publisher Robert Ellis Smith tracks this history [of new inventions and privacy] in a fascinating and fact-filled journey." Wall Street Journal, June 2007
"The most practical of [the new privacy books], with its mix of readable history and sensible advice on what to do about your own privacy." --Wall Street Journal (Robert Templer)
"A delightful read for everyone in business, government, the legal professions, and academia who wants historical insights." --Columbia University Privacy Expert Alan F. Westin
"A superb overview. The organization of the material is both novel and exceptionally helpful, both as a solid read on its merits, as well as a handy reference tool. The book is scholarly and intellectual enough to serve as an academic reference, but clear and simple enough in its presentation to reach a wider audience." --2007 "Writer's Digest" International Self-Published Book Awards competition
"In the course of writing and publishing a monthly newsletter about the right to privacy, I have practiced the advice attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: "Go out and see for yourself. Make others see what you've seen." This book is the product of that endeavor. Since 1974 when I began publishing Privacy Journal newsletter, writing books on the subject, and advocating increased recognition of the right to privacy, I have been accumulating lots of files. In one of those folders marked "History of Privacy," I kept items like the one about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover complaining about clandestine sex in the motor courts of the 1930s. Then I found an intriguing observation from the French humorist Paul Blouet late in the Nineteenth Century about the typical American, "Meeting you in a railway carriage, he will ask you point blank where you are going, what you are doing, and where you are from. By degrees, he grows bolder." At that point I formed the idea for a book on the history of privacy. But this story is about more than privacy. (Secretly, I have long felt that Americans are a little bit nervous about the subject - and probably reluctant to read a whole book about privacy.) Nearly all other books about privacy assume that this is a positive value shared by all Americans. I'm not sure that it is. Our feelings about personal privacy - our privacy and everyone else's - are ambivalent. To understand why, you have to look to all aspects of our culture. When you do, you discover that we value our curiosity more than our privacy."
