In 1998-99, I chaired a public hearing on the improvement of telephone billing that addressed the making available of hitherto undisclosed and uncollected call details. I was surprised that only one of the over 400 public submissions mentioned privacy an objection to the distribution of telephone bills unprotected by envelopes. Until the hearing, the major operator did not collect or provide call details. This was good for privacy but cause for much consumer unhappiness and billing disputes. The hearing had to decide on the form of disclosing more information.
Academic research suggests otherwise.
Irwin Altman of the U.S. has shown that the essence of privacy the ability, explicitly or implicitly, to negotiate boundary conditions of social relations is transcultural. What differs among cultures is the concrete form of privacy concern. The same form will not be found in Sri Lanka, where there are less than four telephones per one hundred people. When privacy was given concrete form, such as indiscriminate access to the details about telephone calls, people understood and cared. That enabled the crafting of a final order of the public hearing that safeguarded privacy while improving the transparency of the billing process.