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Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2013 11:08:38 -0500
To: tscm-l2006_at_googlegroups.com
From: bernieS <ber..._at_netaxs.com>
Subject: Alan Westin, Electronic Privacy Law Advocate, Dies at 83
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Alan Westin testified before Congress during=20
hearings on the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe=20
Streets Act of 1968", which led to Title III.
-bernieS
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/alan-f-westin-scholar-who-defined-righ=
t-to-privacy-dies-at-83.html?hp&_r=3D1&
Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at =
83
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 22, 2013
Alan F. Westin, a legal scholar who nearly half a century ago defined
the modern right to privacy in the incipient computer age =97 a
definition that anticipated the reach of Big Brother and helped
circumscribe its limits =97 died on Monday in Saddle River, N.J. He was 83.
The cause was cancer, his family said.
A lawyer and political scientist, Mr. Westin was at his death emeritus
professor of public law at Columbia, where he had taught for nearly 40
years.
Through his work =97 notably his book =93Privacy and Freedom,=94 published
in 1967 and still a canonical text =97 Mr. Westin was considered to have
created, almost single-handedly, the modern field of privacy law. He
testified frequently on the subject before Congress, spoke about it on
television and radio and wrote about it for newspapers and magazines.
=93He was the most important scholar of privacy since Louis Brandeis,=94
Jeffrey Rosen, a professor of law at George Washington University and
the legal affairs editor of The New Republic, said in a telephone
interview on Thursday. =93He transformed the privacy debate by defining
privacy as the ability to control how much about ourselves we reveal
to others.=94
Since the first hominid grunted gossip about the hominid next door,
every new communications medium has entailed new impingements on
privacy. In a seminal 1890 article in The Harvard Law Review, Mr.
Brandeis, the future Supreme Court Justice, and his law partner,
Samuel D. Warren, were the first to articulate privacy as a legal
right, defining it as =93the right to be let alone.=94
Brandeis and Warren were concerned primarily with covert photography;
later scholarship, including work by Mr. Westin in the 1950s, centered
on things like illegal wiretapping.
But by the 1960s and =9270s, as the widespread computerization of legal,
financial, medical and other personal records loomed, technology had
outrun the law.
Reproductive rights cases of the period =97 including the landmark
Supreme Court cases Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and Roe v. Wade in
1973 =97 held that the Constitution protected an individual=92s right to
privacy in matters of the human body, including contraceptive use and
abortion rights. But the law was largely silent on the question of how
personal data might be used by government or the private sector.
During these years, long before the personal computer and longer still
before the Internet, Mr. Westin set out to codify just this kind of
privacy for the modern age.
=93He knew social history, and he could appreciate the directions that
the technology was pushing the social contract,=94 Lance J. Hoffman, the
director of George Washington=92s Cyber Security Policy and Research
Institute, said in an interview.
Individuals, Mr. Westin argued in =93Privacy and Freedom,=94 have the
right to determine how much of their personal information is disclosed
and to whom, how it should be maintained and how disseminated.
=93This concept became the cornerstone of our modern right to privacy,=94
said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. =93Part of =91Privacy
and Freedom=92 is the argument that privacy enables freedom.=94
=93Privacy and Freedom=94 received two prestigious journalism prizes, the
George Polk Award and the Hillman Prize.
The book, along with other work by Mr. Westin, is widely considered
the foundation of a spate of modern privacy laws, among them the
Privacy Act of 1974, the first law to delimit the gathering and use of
personal information by the federal government.
Mr. Westin was no absolutist. In his early work on wiretapping, for
instance, he condoned its use in certain instances, including cases
where national security was at stake.
His argument prefigured the current national debate about privacy
engendered by post-9/11 legislation like the Patriot Act, which Mr.
Westin, in a 2003 interview, called =93a justified piece of
legislation.=94
=93He insisted on a balance between the competing demands of privacy,
disclosure and surveillance,=94 Mr. Rosen said. =93Much of his work in the
1960s and =9270s appears so prescient after 9/11 and in the age of
Internet.=94
When it came to the use of consumers=92 personal data by corporations,
Mr. Westin also steered a middle course. Consumers were entitled to
withhold such data, he argued, but were equally entitled, if they
wished, to have it used to alert them to products and services
targeted to their interests. (This stance caused Mr. Westin to be
accused by some critics of allying himself too closely with business
interests.)
Mr. Westin, who in the 1970s was editor in chief of The Civil
Liberties Review, a publication of the American Civil Liberties
Foundation, published and edited the newsletter Privacy & American
Business from 1993 to 2006. He was a consultant on privacy issues to
major corporations, including Equifax, the consumer credit reporting
giant; GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical concern; and Verizon
Communications.
Mr. Westin=92s wife died before him, as did a son, David. His survivors
include a son, Jeremy; a daughter, Debra Westin; and three
grandchildren.
A posthumous book by Mr. Westin, about privacy as a historically and
philosophically Jewish construct, is being completed by Mr. Rosen.
In recent years, Mr. Westin turned his attention to the Niagara of
personal data loosed by Google, Facebook and their ilk. Trying to stem
this tide was a hopeless task, and he knew it.
=93He recognized that the problems of protecting privacy are now so
daunting that they can=92t be dealt with by law alone, but require a mix
of legal, social and technological solutions,=94 Mr. Rosen said.
The son of Irving Westin and the former Etta Furman, Alan Furman
Westin was born in Manhattan on Oct. 11, 1929; received a bachelor=92s
degree in political science from the University of Florida in 1948,
followed by a law degree from Harvard in 1951; was admitted to the bar
in 1952; married Bea Shapoff, a teacher, in 1954 in a ceremony in
which the bride wore a waltz-length white gown; joined the Columbia
faculty in 1959; earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in
1965 (his dissertation topic was =93Privacy in Western Political
History=94); lived for many years in Teaneck, N.J.; edited a string of
books, including =93Freedom Now! The Civil-Rights Struggle in America=94
(1964), =93Information Technology in a Democracy=94 (1971) and =93Getting
Angry Six Times a Week: A Portfolio of Political Cartoons=94 (1979);
once made a sound recording titled =93I Wonder Who=92s Bugging You Now=94;
was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Anti-Defamation League of B=92nai B=92rith and the American Jewish
Congress; had a Social Security number obtained in Massachusetts; and
was a registered Democrat who last voted in 2011 =97 all public
information, obtainable online at the touch of a button or two.
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:24 CST