| Sumario: | The growing concern over the loss of privacy in peoples' lives is paralleled by a paradoxical interest in reality TV shows that subject participants to constant and all-encompassing surveillance. While lawmakers pontificate over privacy issues and Congress considers hundreds of privacy protection bills, the population willingly submits to photo IDs, surveillance cameras everywhere, government wiretapping, and the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment in the name of war on drugs; ceding privacy voluntarily in return for the promise of security. In a society in which people are encouraged to talk about themselves publicly through the medium of chat shows and therapists have demonized silence and secrets, others worry about the invasion of their privacy on the Internet. Some approve of the “openness” of the new exhibitionism in the belief that it will bring everyone together, but community and individualism are under threat. The more public space expands, the more it threatens public life, because secrecy is essential to social relations.
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