ABSTRACT

It is probably safe to say that since the beginning of communication, back in prehistoric times, there were things that were to be kept private. From the location of the best fishing to the secret passage into the cave next door, certain facts were reserved only for a few knowledgeable friends. Maybe even these facts were so private that there was only one person in the world who knew them. We have made “societal rules” around a variety of things that we want to keep private or share only among a few, but still the concept of privacy expectations comes with our unwritten social code. And wherever there has been the code of privacy, there has been the concern over its violation. Have computers brought this on? Certainly not! Maintaining privacy has been important and even more important have been the methods used to try to keep that data a secret. Today in our wired society, however, we still face the same primary threat to privacy that has existed for centuries: mistakes and carelessness of the individuals who have been entrusted to preserve privacy — maybe even the “owner” of the data.