CNET highlights the privacy issues and changes

nbruce writes “”According to the research in P&AB’s September 2003 issue, 36 percent of the American public, some 75 million adults, call themselves “Privacy Fundamentalists.” These are people who are passionate about threats to their privacy by businesses and favor government regulation of corporate information practices.

That’s a huge leap from 2000, when only 25 percent of respondents to a similar survey fit this category. Moreover, in 2003, P&AB found that 53 percent of Americans (10 percent fewer than in 2000) could currently be categorized as “Privacy Pragmatists,” that is, people who will freely exchange personal information if the benefits they receive are perceived as greater than the privacy risks they’re taking.Full story

The article goes on to mini-reviews of

  • “Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century,” by longtime privacy activist Simson Garfinkel
  • “The Naked Corporation” and an earlier book, “The Privacy Payoff: How Successful Businesses Build Consumer Trust,” by the privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian, and journalist Tyler J. Hamilton
  • Privacy Diagnostic Tool Workbook, which assesses essential privacy principles”