by Michael Lind

About the author: Michael Lind is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute, and the coauthor of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.

In a remarkably short period of time, “privacy” has moved from the margins to the center of political debate in the United States, Canada and Europe. The nebulous concept today embraces a number of issues, ranging from the serious—the possible abuse of the results of genetic testing by corporations and the government—to the trivial—the sharing of information about consumer preferences among businesses that bombard hapless consumers with unsolicited catalogs and e-mail advertisements. What unites these diverse concerns, according to the emerging consensus, is the danger that new technologies of surveillance, data-recording and data exchange will...