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Introduction In Lewis Padgett's1 short story, Private Eye, it is discovered that the whole of the physical environment doubles as a pervasive recording system: On wall, tree, patch of ground people walk upon, their action and conversation leaves 'fingerprints' of light and sound waves.2 Scientists have learned to descramble these naturally created records of people's activities and compile them into video archives containing individual's entire past.3 Government investigations proceed very differently from those in our own world. Police detectives spend most of their time in a screening room, rewinding and fast-forwarding through each suspect's life.4 When they want a closer look, they can slow or pause their film to examine every expression of his face, muscular flection, breath he [draws].5 When curious about the experiences that have shaped him, they can instantly transport themselves back into his childhood.6 Even those not currently under such a government microscope know that each moment of their lives is preserved for [a]n invisible audience from the future.7 The inescapable surveillance that Padgett describes in his obscure 1949 story resembles that described in another more famous science fiction tale published the same year: George Orwell's 1984. Like George Orwell's vision of a technologically transformed future,8 the world imagined by Padgett is one where individual privacy is brought by science to the brink of extinction. But unlike the inhabitants of Orwell's imagined world, who have resigned themselves to living without their privacy, the inhabitants of the world described by Padgett have made an impressive and arguably effective effort to save it. They have countered the threat posed by exotic technology with a not-so-exotic legal device: a rule that past-tracing evidence can be accessed for purposes of investigating a serious crime and introduced at trial only if it [has] a direct connection with the crime.9 Although natural barriers no longer stand in the way of paternalistic or distrustful officials, the law continues to do so: Government investigators are allowed to explore people's pasts when doing so is indispensable to the task of protecting people or of apprehending those who have harmed them.10 The courts and legal thinkers of Padgett's time did not carefully examine the effectiveness of such protections, and there was little reason to worry about this question in 1949, when nothing remotely like technology played a significant part in their day-to-day lives. But the challenge outlined in this story is a more pressing concern now. While the physics of Padgett's imagined world have remained firmly in the realm of fiction (there are no hidden video recordings encoded in wood, stone, or soil), its privacy-eroding technology is not that far from becoming reality. Walls, and trees do not function as natural video cameras, but new technologies allow public authorities to line them with artificial ones. A growing number of communities throughout the world are doing so on a massive scale. The United Kingdom has led the way. Cameras now encircle the center of London in a ring of steel, photographing the license plate and driver of vehicle that enters.11 A massive video surveillance system also watches the interior of the city.12 Other British cities-according to one count, at least 440 in all13-have also covered whole neighborhoods and business districts with cameras. American cities are rapidly following suit. Although most residents and visitors of New York remain oblivious to them, thousands of video cameras,14 many indistinguishable from lampposts, sit above parks and streets throughout the city and on the campuses of schools and universities.15 The City of Baltimore has installed cameras at all 106 downtown intersections and in its Inner Harbor area.16 The Washington, D. …
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