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.
