You can hardly pass through customs at an airport today without having your picture taken and your fingertips scanned, with that information stored in an unseen archive. Using smart technology at home raises questions about how your shared data—shopping habits, security decisions, media choices—might be used. Every day, Americans surrender private information to entities promising safety or convenience, a trade-off long taken for granted. However, the extent of its nefariousness has become clearer. The issue is not just misuse of data, but our willingness to have our information used, abused, and sold back to us. This startling examination reveals that this situation was not an inevitable result of technological progress. It highlights key moments in the past 130 years of U.S. history where privacy was central to debates over journalistic freedom, national security, surveillance, big data, and reproductive rights. Despite numerous opportunities to protect the public good and safeguard our information, Americans have consistently squandered them. The wide range of debates presented illustrates that, despite America’s rhetoric of individual freedom, we have some of the weakest privacy protections in the developed world. This provocative survey addresses an increasingly relevant topic as trust continues to be betrayed.
