So, too, are the themes of government surveillance, intrusion, and control on one hand and man losing control of his tools in the other. Those twin themes of invasion of privacy and computer control are showing up again and again with greater frequency these days. And people are getting annoyed. Some would say paranoid. Then again, as the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Privacy is as special and American as apple pie.
The whole idea eats away at us, bugs us. We interpret it as a loss of independence, being disempowered. It's our information, and we should be the one's to decide how it is going to be used and who is going to see it. Gotta Have It How we see and understand privacy helps to determine our attitudes toward it. Of course, there was a time this was simple, understood, and self-explanatory.