"It is not surprising that these developments have elicited mixed responses. While the enormous actual and potential benefits of information and surveillance technology, genetic science and biometrics are generally acknowledged, many commentators are concerned about the cost which may have to be paid for these benefits in terms of personal privacy and autonomy. Over the past decade, this anxiety has been expressed in numerous articles, both in the academic journals and the mainstream press. These theme hass also been explored in a number of rescent successful Hollywood films. This anxiety is by no means universal. Those who dispute the view that privacy today is facing threats of unprecedented magnitude point out that in many ways citizens of affluent Western countries have more of some kinds of privacy than at any other time in history. The novelist Jonathan Frazen writes: In 1890, an American typically lived in a small town under conditions of near-panoptical surveillance. Not only did his every purchase “register”, but it registered in the eyes and the memory of shopkeepers who knew him, his parents, his wife, and his children. He couldn't so much as walk to the post office without having his movements tracked and analyzed by neighbors. Probably he grew up sleeping in the same bed with his siblings and possibly with his parents, too. Unless he was well off, his transportation – a train, a horse, his own two feet- either was communal or exposed him to the public eye. In the suburbs and exurbs where the typical American lives today, tiny nuclear families inhabit enormous houses, in which each person has his or her own bedroom and, sometimes, bathroom … It's no longer the rule that you know your neighbors. Communities tend to be virtual, the participants either faceless or firmly in control of the face they present. Transportation is largly private; the latest SUVs are the size of living rooms and come with onboard telephones, CD players and TV screens; behind the tinted windows of one of these high-riding I-see-you-but you-can't-see-me mobile PrivacyGuard units, a person can be wearing pyjamas or a licorice bikini, for all anybody knows or cares. The “right to be left alone”? Far from disappearing it's exploding. It's the essence of modern Americana architecture, landscape, transportation, communication and mainstream political philosophy.4"