Jeffrey Rosen [ Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School http://www.law.gwu.edu/fac/faculty.asp?pkey_f=60 ]:

We will share with strangers but the problem now is that the technology allows information to be collected and shared in the future. This threat is more important now than before because the right to be private, formerly held only by aristocrats, is now important to us. All of us, public and private , banal and famous, can have our remarks in chat rooms wrenched out of chat rooms.

Why should we care about privacy if we have nothing to hide? He cited a number of people who thought that we should just expose everything. Jeff says that this is a wrong argument. The first argument against this is the argument of attention span. The world has a second to listen and you need a minute to explain yourself.

Jeff note a number of cases in which a person was characterized by a small exposure of private information that was impossible to correct because of the attention span problem. A number of these cases are discussed in his new book, The Unwanted Gaze.

Jeff noted that someone has jokingly proposed that if Supreme Court proceedings were broadcast, perhaps armed guards would be required to be sure that you listened to the whole proceedings and paid attention to everything.

You can read more about Jeff's book on this page: [ http://www.law.gwu.edu/faculty_pubs/rosen.htm ]

What's inside...