Computers have exacerbated the problem of privacy in several ways: size of databases, ease of exchanging data, ease of collecting data, and permanence of records.
The computerization of records makes it easy to store very large databases (more individuals in a database and more data about each individual). The computer also makes it possible to collect information which was not practical before, such as records of telephone calls, cable TV usage, credit card purchases, and, of course, whatever a person has been doing on the computer.
Computer networking makes it possible to exchange such information very easily. Once collected, data can be sold or traded, or freely given away. Errors sometimes spread more rapidly than they can be corrected. Computer data can also be stolen. The task of preventing data from being seen by those who are not authorized belongs to the art of computer security.
Computer records tend to be more permanent than paper records, because they take up far less space. Consequently, something a person did at the age of ten can remain on his computer record forever. If school records were made accessible to employers, insurance companies, and various government agencies, for example, there would be a danger that remarks about Johnny by his fourth-grade teacher, or testing in the ninth grade, might haunt him for the rest of his life. (Johnson 1985)
The large scale, exchangeability, and relative permanence of computerized databases about individuals is not all bad. Most of these records exist to serve a legitimate need: the need of businesses, government agencies, and other organizations to make informed decisions---decisions about hiring, giving credit, paying insurance benefits, issuing insurance policies, and so on.
In the "good old days," when most people lived in small communities, computer assistance was neither available nor needed to make such decisions. People knew each other, and what they didn't know from direct observation, they heard from their neighbors and acquaintances. Many business decisions were based on direct personal knowledge. The banker and the constable would have known that Huck Finn's Pap was a drunk. The "database" was a distributed and redundant neural system stored in people's heads; the "network" was village gossip.
This kind of personal knowledge no longer exists for a vast majority of Americans. It is not uncommon for a person born in Missouri or Indiana to move to California, then to Florida three years later, and a few years after that to Michigan. Most of us live in large cities; there are over 130 metropolitan areas with populations in excess of a quarter million. Even moving across town in Dayton or Indianapolis, let alone Chicago, would put us in a completely different social environment. The scale of businesses and government agencies has also increased. Large banks, insurance companies, and mail order firms can serve tens of thousands of customers all across the country. With the increasing scale of cities and organizations and the high mobility of twentieth-century life, the information that direct observation and the village grapevine can no longer supply is now provided by computer databases and networks. (Johnson 1985, Kling 1996b)