Publishing: Newsbook on Privacy

• Share

Some of today's best journalists do not appear in daily papers or on TV or in magazines. Major issues are often so complex that the only way to deal with them is in book form, and book publishers have been concentrating more and more on lengthy treatment of topical matters. Privacy and Freedom, a thoughtful assessment by Alan F. Westin of the growing threat to the traditional American right to be left alone, is a case in point.

Westin, a 37-year-old Columbia University lawyer and political scientist, is regarded by many as the leading U.S. specialist on privacy. His writings on the subject have been cited by the Supreme Court and used as a basis for legislation. In his new book published by Atheneum, Westin insists that the right to privacy must nolonger be taken for granted. The mounting psychological and electronic assault on private lives poses a threat that cannot be exaggerated, he points out, and "we have only a few years of lead time before the problem will outgrow our capacity to apply controls."

Mechanical Spies. Sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and financed by $75,000 worth of Carnegie Corporation grants, Privacy and Freedom took four years to write. It involved Westin in hundreds of interviews, thousands of hours of research through newspapers, court records and books, ranging from Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Just as thoroughly, Westin has compiled a catalogue of electronic bugging devices, wiretaps and mechanical spies that will surprise even those who think they are up on the subject. Items currently available: TV cameras small enough to fit in a vest pocket with an "eye" the width of a cigarette; sniper-scopes that can spot a man at 700 yards in the dark; cameras and recorders that turn on when anyone enters a room or starts talking; an ultrasonic wave that can snoop on a conversation by picking up dim voice vibrations in window glass.

Many of the surveillance devices are in extremely wide use. Businesses spy on assembly-line workers and executives alike. Colleges listen in on dormitory rooms. Blackmail-minded brothel owners look in on their customers. Police hunt homosexuals with ceiling cameras installed in men's rest rooms. Cops also bug hoods, while hoods bug cops. Some towns have experimented with closed-circuit TV cameras on the streets; using street lights, police can watch at night for crimes. District attorneys have been known to record lawyer-defendant conferences, and everyone believes that everyone's wiretapping everyone else in Washington, D.C. One Capitol telephone line, reports Westin, had eight taps on it and was so sapped of power that normal conversations were inaudible.