Abstract
While the USA ardently fought the Fascist powers of the Axis, it experienced its own dilemma with regard to data protection shortly after the end of World War II. ’Blacklists’ and ’Redlists’ became the order of the day throughout the USA. Federal government agencies began to keep lengthy dossiers on people who they considered to be security risks or, even worse, traitors to their country. One only had to be denounced by a fellow colleague in order to qualify for a government file. Thus, the USA, for the second time in its history experienced the phenomenon of the ’witch hunt.’ Indeed, some feel that current American policy on the notion of privacy is still tied to the Puritan ethic which disallowed privacy in a society of communalism and religious fanaticism. The return to the witch hunts in the late forties had many privacy advocates wondering if the USA was traveling down the trail already blazed by the Salem Puritans over 200 years earlier.
The saint and poet seek privacy
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Culture
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References
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© 1992 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Madsen, W. (1992). The USA: First in Technology and Last in Data Protection. In: Handbook of Personal Data Protection. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12806-8_5
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