United States
of America

(NOT PRINTED AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE) EE 15

Congressional Record

PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE QI* CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION

 

 

Vol. 115

WASHINGTON, TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1969

No. 55

 

House of Representatives

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY: A
CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

Mr. PELL. Mr. President, we are all
becoming increasingly aware that ad-
vances in technology can. have a broad
and unforeseen impact on the quality of
our lives. It was not too long ago that
advances in science were hailed almost
universally and without reservation as
progress, and the application of new dis-
coveries through technology was assumed
to be an unmitigated good.

We now have a more sophisticated view
of the role of science and technology in
our society. We still anticipate the bene-
fits of scientific research and technologi-
cal development, but through experience
we have learned that science and tech-
nology will serve us well only to the ex-
tent that we insist that it do so. We are
gaining a new appreciation of the need
to evaluate the long-range impact of
technological development.

Mr. President, Representative CoRNEL-
tus E. GaLLaGHer, of New Jersey, on
March 26 addressed himself to the po-
tential conflict between technology and
society in a speech before the Chicago
Chapter of the Institute of Management
Sciences. Representative GALLAGHER
spoke specifically of the threat to human
privacy posed by the new technology of
information handling. I commend his re-
marks to my colleagues, and ask unani-
mous consent that the text of his speech
be printed at this point in the Recorp.

There being no objection, the state-
ment was ordered to be printed in the
Recorp, as follows:

TECHNOLOGY AND SocreTY: A CONFLICT oF
INTEREST?

(Speech of Congressman CorNELIus E. Gat-
LactieR before the Institute of Management
Sciences, Chicago Chapter, March 26, 1969)
America has produced the richest and most

complex society the world has ever known.

The major impetus toward our unparalleled

prosperity has been our ability to harness

our resources and to use the gifts we have
received as a nation for the benefit of our
citizens. It is not an overstatement to say
that technology has created America; at least
in the sense that the applications of science
have created the life led by most Americans.

The fundamental premise of this speech Is

that technology should be morally neutral—

it should have no values itself other than
the manner tn which soclety chooses to ap-
ply it.

Immediately, however, there can be seen
numerous objections to such a premise, For
example, it has often been stated that tech-
nology opens doors for man, but does not

compel him to enter, Yet, it must be realized
that in the real world of free enterprise, a
logic is imposed which strips such technolo-
gical advance of its ideal neutrality. The first
application of a new technology—the first
organization through the door—is likely to
make the most money while the last is likely
to find it slammed in its face. Risktaking by
industry is motivated by the profit factor:
thus, what ever neutrality a technology may
have is already diluted by the financial facts
of its development and the rush for its de-
ployment.

When the decision is made to exploit a new
technology, major social and institutional
change follows. It is impossible to predict the
range or the character of that change. A de-
velopment and deployment decision is made
solely upon the first-order effects, which are
customarily profit, institutional advantage,
or national policy in the case of federally in-
spired innovation, The evaluation of the sec-
ond or third-order effects, such as social costs
and value dislocations, only takes place after
a technology has been established.

What occurs then is a virtually dictated
application of an innovation and the impact
upon the rest of society only becomes visible
after the technology has become operative.
It is only by the time a sizable investment
of money, resources, and commitment have
coalesced that society can know what it has
really done. The innovation itself becomes a
powerful reason for continuing in that di-
rection and the difficulties and the dangers
must be, in large measure, either ignored or
rationalized. To put it bluntly, the problems
have been transferred from ones of engi-
neering to ones of public relations.

To illustrate the current status of technol-
ogy in America, let us imagine that technol-
ogy is a heathen idol and that Americans are
primitives. What have we, as a society, of-
fered this God in the way of sacrifice?

First, we have given him our air. Our cities
form the bottom of an airborne cesspool. Our
atmosphere is now so polluted that natural
temperature inversions threaten every single
person living in large metropolitan areas, For
that simplest and freest of commodities—a
breath of fresh air—we must depart from our
homes and our jobs. The pilgrimage to Mecca
for the infidels of America its the summer
vacation to a place where man has not
despoiled his heritage.

It is interesting to note fn this connection
that we have saved the whooping crane by
creating wild-life sanctuaries and imposing
the strictest rules and regulations for the
preservation of this species. But man, who
emulates the cry that gives the whooping
crane its name by his pollution inspired
cough, has not been so fortunate. As colum-
nist Arthur Hoppe has suggested, it may be
necessary to establish human-life sanctu-
aries to assure the continuation of Homo
Sapiens.

The next sacrifice we have made to the God
of technology is our water. All forms of pol-
lution are dumped into our rivers and lakes,
and a fresh, pure stream near an urban area
is as rare today as a polluted one was earlier
in our history. Raw sewage is dumped into
rivers from which downstream communities
take their drinking water. Lake Erie, accord-
ing to many observers, can never be reclaimed
from technology's abuse. Bodies of water
which have existed practically since time
began, are now being ruined in a few years,

I would like to call your attention to the
recent problem with offshore oi} drilling near
Santa Barbara, To the best of my knowledge,
the crucial social question was never asked:
did America need this source of of]? Was it
essential to deploy such a risky procedure at
this time or could the development stage
have continued without deployment? It is
my hope that we will learn a great deal from
this catastrophic experience. But if past his-
tory is an indication, the only lesson will be
to cast doubt on the validity of the old cliche:
“To spread oil on troubled waters.”

In addition to our air and our water, we
have not hesitated to make human sacrifices
to the idol of voractous technology. Our na-
tion’s highways are nourished by the blood of
our children and the reports of the mangled
victims of auto accidents make even the
carnage of Vietnam seem insignificant. In
sheer numbers, slaughter on the ‘highways
was approximately five times as great last
year as were our losses in the tragic Vietnam
conflict. In theory, we commit our youth to
Vietnam in pursuit of a noble ideal; we
@estroy our young men and young women
on their way to the neighborhood drive-in.

Over all the world hangs the ultimate
symbol of the God of technology—the mush-
voom cloud of atomic holocaust. Mankind
genufiects to that God every time we say we
coexist on our planet because of a “balance
of terror.”

I have never felt that there is any true
balance of terror, it is only the product
of a universe that is out of balance.

How truly trrational we have become may
be seen in the following hypothetical exam-
ple. It is a basic assumption of the cold
war, at least in some quarters, that should
the American way of life be fatally threat-
ened, we should incinerate those who oppose
us. This would, of course, result in our own
incineration and quite probably the fallout
would make our globe uninhabitable. Yet,
those who advocate this course of future
action are acclaimed as realists and patriots.

But any man who would propose that all
industry stop and all autos be taken from
the highways in order to make our atmos-
phere habitable, would immediately be
branded ag insane.

So it is sane to destroy the whole world
and yet it is crazy to take extreme action to
make the world livable. The “balance of
terror” has certainly unbalanced something.

 
The bomb, as terrifying as it is, merely
promises the extinction of life All men,
be they free or enslaved, have come to some
individual understanding with the fact of
eventual death. But the latest visitation from
the God of technology promises to make .us
less than human and threatens to make us
slaves, ,

The computer demands that we poor dumb
savages offer up our individuality, our dig-
nity, and our privacy.

It provides a new priesthood with a tool
to drive us to our knees, to manipulate our
actions, to petrify our past mistakes, and
makes the sword of Damocles dangle, gleam-
ing with its promise of eventual destruction,
in every American’s future.

It is extremely important to emphasize
that the computer and its applications not
only threaten those who are guilty or who
wish to conceal their past. The computer
threatens us all; yes even that man who
must exist somewhere who has never done
anything he could not put on-his résumé.

The computer is not only a super fast ad-
ding machine; it ts more than an automated
filing cabinet; it is even more than the heart
of far-flung communication systems. The
application of computer technology, in its
most frightening aspect, has perhaps best
been described by Erich Fromm in his re-
cently published The Revolution of Hope;
Toward a Humanized Technology:

“A specter is stalking in our midst... A
completely mechanized society, devoted to
maximal material output and consumption,
directed by comptuters: and in this social
process, man himself is being transformed
into a part of the total machine, weil fed
and entertained, yet passive, unalive, and
with little feeling. With the victory of the
new society, individualism and privacy will
have disappeared .. .”

The shattered schemes of all the dewy-eyed
utopians which litter the shores of history
are now concelvable. All the beautiful ideal-
isms which so quickly turned into ugly forms
of fascims can now be engineered and: imple-
mented. Technology has made the world so
small and the computer has given men such
a@ powerful instrument of social control, that
individual dreams, which became local night-
mares, can now be worldwide catastrophies.

Dr. Ida Hoos, of the Space Sciences Labora-
tory at the University of California, has called
my attention to a poem by Martyn Skinner
which says it all:

“Gone are the days when madness was con-
fined

By seas or hills from spreading through man-

. kind;

When, though a Nero fooled upon a string,

Wisdom still reigned unruffied in Peking;

And God in welcome smiled upon Buddha's
face

Though Calvin in Geneva preached of grace,

For now our linked-up globe has shrunk so
small,

One Hitler-in it means mad days for all.”

To put it bluntly, all our eggs are in one
basket. We can describe where we are by
borrowing the terms of one of man’s truly
great technological triumphs: we are all
Passengers on ‘Spaceship Earth,’ following a
most uncertain orbit.

This then is the context in which we must
consider technology and American society.
Ramifications of our actions reverberate in
the Capitols of the world; we truly live in a
"Global Village’.

Understanding that we are talking about
al men, let us consider what has already
happened to many among us who have sur-
rendered totally to the machine and inhuman
value systems. Fromm described technological
man in these chilling terms: “. . . (H)aving
lost compassion and empathy, they do not
touch anybody—nor can they be touched.
Their triumph in life is not to need anybody.
They take pride in their untouchability and
Pleasure in being able to hurt .. . Whether
this is done in criminal or legitimate ways
depends more on social factors than on psy-
chological ones.”

With the reins of computer technology in
such hands, we may very well be racing to our

own destruction, Certainly a free spirit is the
most obvious victim of such breathing robots,
and free government js not far behind.

Dr. F. A. Hayek, who was professor of
moral and social science at the University
of Chicago from 1960 to 1962, puts the ulti-
mate threat in these terms:

“Man owes some of his greatest success to
the fact that he has not been able to control
social life. In the past the spontanedus forces
of growth asserted themselves against the
organized coercion of the state. With the
technical means of control now at the dis-
posal of Government, such assertion may
s500n become impossible.”

The assertion of which Dr, Hayek speaks is
not only that of organized groups striving
to control policy; it is also individual man
himself yearning to be a part of the world
and to influence the course of events which
affect and alter his times. Fromm makes
the extremely valuable point that if man
were infinitely malleable, if social pressures
could force man into any mold, there would
never have been any revolutions. Man, how-
ever, simply is not made that way. Fromm
describes man in these terms:

“The dynamism of human nature inas-
much as it is human in primarily rooted in
this need of man to express his faculties in
relation to the world rather than in his need
to use the world for satisfaction of his phsysi-
ological necessities. This means: because I
have eyes, I have the need to see .. . because
I have a heart, I have the need to feel . . . in
short, because I am a man, I am in need of
man and of the world.”

The countervailing force which technology
and the computer put at the service of re-
pressive interests has been described by a
New Left critic of the American scene. I cer-
tainly do not endorse the totality of Paul
Goodman’s ideas, but he does make a number
of provocative points. In Like a Conquered
Province, Goodman says:

“Human beings tend to be excluded when a
logistic” (that is, a computer-oriented) “style
becomes universally pervasive, so that values
and data that cannot be standardized and
programed are excluded, when function is
adjusted to the technology rather than
technology to function ... when there de-
velops an establishment of managers and
experts who license and allot resources, and
which deludes itself that it alone knows the
only right method ... then common folk
become docile clients, maintained by suffer-
ance, or they are treated as deviant.”

Fromm and Goodman are suggesting a cru-
cial point to those of us in this room. We all
have a sizable stake in America as it is today;
while we do not oppose change and are un-
doubtedly not reactionaries, yet we are all,
I would suspect, conservatives in the sense
that we believe we must build upon the past.
Riot and rebellion are obnoxious to us all and
we would unite in comdemning violence as an
instrument of social change. But the question
must be asked: does our emphasis on the
manipulations of technological culture deny
man the opportunity to express himself? Has
the erection of Intricate social systems which
demand, at the very least, the acquiescence
of the minority, placed roadblocks in the way
of the rational use of human beings? In my
view, Fromm and Goodman are implying that
imposing a mechanistic culture between
man and his needs to affect the world creates
rebellion.

Here may indeed be the roots of the
violence we see around us. Articulate and
aggressive segments of our society are clam-
oring for increased participation in the de-
cision-making process. Blacks, hippies, stu-
dents, ghetto parents, and members of the
dissenting academy are united in demanding
a@ greater piece of the action or, at the very
lease, a heightened sense of personal involve-
ment in and control over their own destinies.
All around us we see real anger, spreading
disenchantment with the political process,
and a frequently hysterical assault against
the bastions of orthodoxy. Let me make it
clear: I believe there is no validity in vio-~
lence, but in condemning the action of others
we must ask ourselves if we do not bear some

of the responsibility for creating an en-
vironment which, by its inhuman systems
Spproach, contributes to the creation of vio-
ence.

When I began my studies of privacy over
five years ago, I felt that the reaction of
man to a depersonalized atmosphere could
be expressed by a quotation from Alfred
North Whitehead:

“Men might sink into mere routine repeti-
tion of habitual acts and accustomed social
processes at a fairly low level, almost brain-
less, as certain insects can run a stable
society though they have no brains.”

But seeing problems by the light of the
burning ghettos must force a re-examination
of all our concepts and a re-evaluation of
social and political modes. In any event, it is
perfectly apparent that not all “common
folk” have become the “docile clients” en-
visioned by Goodman.

Robert Theobald is concerned with the im-.
pact of science and technology on soclety and
the economy. He has written extensively on
the problems of modernization, technologti-
cal change, and economic growth patterns.
In 1964, he made a statement which I feel
is quite relevant to the issues I am discussing
with you this evening:

“Whether increasing violence and social
disorder can fairly be laid at the door of the
computer is, however, peripheral to the pos-
sibility of the development of a police state
. . . the generalized use of the computer as
a@ means of societal control threatens to de-
stroy at least the right of privacy, and very
probably ali the present rights, of the in-
dividual .. .”

Theobald is not given to making such
statements lightly and it is interesting to
note that he underlined the “all” in that
quotation. .

Two years later, in July 1966, my Special
Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy was
presented with a proposal which probably
would have done exactly what Theobald
warned might happen. This was the Bureau
of the Budget suggestions for a National Data
Bank. Those hearings have been so widely
discussed that I do not feel I should go into
the full story now.

Privacy and Freedom, a brilliant 1967 book
by Dr. Alan Westin, and the soon to be
published The Death of Privacy, by Dr. Jer-
ry Rosenberg have lengthy sections which
describe the ramifications of our hearings.

The general problem of computer privacy
is now receiving influential attention. The
American Academy of Arts and Sciences’
Committee on the year 2000 has a working
party on “The Social Implications of the
Computer.” The Director, Dr. R. M. Fano of
M.LT., has informed me that at least a
dozen papers will be published this year.
The National Academy of Science recently
formed 9 Computer Science and Engineering
Board. One of its major undertakings will
be to conduct a heavily financed study of
computers, data banks, and privacy, Final-
ly, the Harvard University Program on Tech-
nology and Society will publish a collec-
tion of papers this summer under the ti-
tle Information Systems and Democratic Poli-
tics. My 1966 speech, “Science, Privacy, and
Law—The Need For a Balance’ is to be in-
cluded.

There is one point I made at the 1966
hearings on “The Computer and Invasion of
Privacy,” which seems generally misunder-
stood. I said that we could not be sure that
the data contained in such a National Data
Bank system would always be used by benev-~
olent men or for benevolent purposes.

Some people felt I was questioning the
integrity of officials connected with federal
statistical programs: that is certainly not
true, In fact, I have a great deal of respect
for federal officers involved in data collec-
tion and publication but my point was, and
continues to be, that we cannot guarantee
the level of responsibility of the future users
of federally compiled dossiers on Americans.

In addition, it is certainly not a matter
solely of integrity. Let me quote a statement
made by Supreme Court Justice Brandeis
in 1928:
“Experience should teach us to be most
on our guard to protect liberty when the
government’s purposes are beneficient. Men
born to freedom are naturally alert to repel
invasion of their liberty by evilminded rul-
ers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
the insidious encroachments by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding.”

Erich Fromm provides yet another insight
about decently motivated social planners:

“Precisely because the more conventionally
minded managers do not lack good will, but
rather imagination and vision of a fully hu-
man life, they are even more dangerous,
from the standpoint of humanistic plan-
ning ... in fact, their personal decency
makes them more immune to doubts about
the methods of their planning.”

A viable democracy depends on an atmos-
phere in which people can go their own way
for the vast majority of their daily experi-
ences and satisfactions. Freedom from ei-
ther subtle or overt coercion is the birth-
right of our citizens. In a nation as large and
as complex as America, which contains so
many different ethnic and cultural heritages,
no one class of men—no matter how well
educated or how nobly motivated—can im-
pose the standards of their group on the re-
mainder of American society.

I would like to illustrate this from first
hearings conducted by my Special Subcom-
mittee on Invasion of Privacy. In 1965, we in-
vestigated in-depth the premises, principles,
and procedures of those who create and ad-
minister psychological tests. These were de-
cent liberal men whose goal was to under-
stand our society and to move toward a
sound, scientific explanation of interpersonal
relationships. Yet, they created tests which
virtually mirrored their own preconceptions.
“To prove you were adjusted, you had to prove
it on their terms.

For example, in one widely used test, a
Preference for Lincoln over Washington is
marked as an exhibition of a feminine char-
acteristic. When I put the question to the
experts who were testifying that Sonny Lis-
ton would undoubtedly prefer Lincoln be-
cause he had freed the Negro people from
slavery, I was met with a stunning lack of
understanding. I pressed the question and
innocently inquired which of the experts be-
fore me would care to be the one who in-
formed Sonny Liston that he was unmascu-
line; there were no volunteers.

Another question which was asked on this
test was “Do you believe in the second com-
ing of Christ?” This was placed in the test,
I was informed, to determine the depth of
religious feeling in the person taking the
test. I inquired if this question were removed
from tests administered to Jews and other re-
ligious groups, since they did not accept
Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. It was
hardly conceivable to my expert witnesses
that anyone could have values totally dif-
ferent from thelr own and I was met with all
sorts of stylish evasions.

This points up a very real danger of stand-
ardization and social rigidity which might
flow from such a powerful instrument as a
National Data Bank. The very same people
who are actively lobbying for a truly effec-
tive statistical center, containing individual
identifying information, are those who de-
vised tests which characterize Sonny Liston
effeminate and Rabbi Wise irreligious.

I would now like to describe a plan I heard
proposed in absolute sincerity by some of the
most respected social scientists in our nation.

It is widely believed that successful Ameri-
cans must know how and why some Ameri-
cans have failed. Perhaps I should put that a
little differently and say that some Ameri-
cans just cannot understand why other
Americans are not carbon copies of them-
selves,

Be that as it may, one way in which
America is meeting the problem of poverty
is to assist in the construction of low-cost
housing. This is certainly socially beneficial
and I have cast many votes in the Congress
to attempt to insure each American a decent
place to live. Yet, the social scientists, in
their zeal to discover more and more about

the disadvantaged citizen, proposed to use
low cost housing as a great pool of research
and those who lived in it as guinea pigs.
They seriously proposed to bug each room
in each apartment of a federally sponsored
low-rent project. They would then feed every
single sentence uttered by the apartment
awellers into a computer. This computer
would then deliver a profile of these Ameri-
cans and their habits and compare the sta-
tistical profiles to Americans who have
“made it.”

I was outraged when I heard this sugges-
tion and it was not carried out. The casual
willingness to turn a citizen's life into a
fishbowl did not concern these social scien-
tists; valuable research could be gained and,
while the Bill of Rights certainly protected
their privacy, it was not relevent to the sub-
jects of the research,

This brings to mind the words of Aldous
Huxley: “Who will mount guard over our
guardians, who will engineer the engineers?
The answer is a bland dental that they need
any supervision ... PH.Ds in sociology will
never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Gala-
had’s their strength is as the strength of ten
because their heart is pure; and their heart
is pure because they are scientists and have
taken six thousand hours of social studies.”

No matter from what source they may
come, unwarranted invasions of privacy must
be identified and resisted. Liberty under law
is our foundation as a stable nation and it is
my conviction that a suffocating sense of
surveillance will restrict liberty and, ulti-
mately, undermine law,

Let me speak briefly about the Bill of
Rights and praise, yet again, the brillance of
those who drafted it. While privacy is not
mentioned by name, the first ten amend-
ments to our Constitution contain provi-
sions guaranteeing rights to the individual
which covered completely the range of pri-
vacy invasion known in the 18th century. A

man cannot be compelled to give up his home

to quarter troops; a man cannot be forced
to give testimony against himself: a man has
the right to face his accuser In an adversary
proceeding with the advice of legal counsel.
Most important, is one of the most beautiful
concepts rendered into the English language.
The Fourth Amendment states simply: “The
right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not
be violated, and.no warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause...”

In perhaps its most powerful recent mani-
festation, Justice Douglas, speaking for*the
Supreme Court in the Griswold Case in 1965,
cites a number of constitutional guarantees
and proclaims; “... The Bill of Rights have
penumbras formed by emanations from those
guarantees that help give them life and*sub-
stance.” Sections of the First, Third, Fourth,
Fifth and Ninth Amendments create “Zones
of Privacy,” according to Justice Douglas.

Commenting on the Griswold Case in The
Wisconsin Law Review in 1966, Princeton's
Cromwell Professor of Law, William Beaney,
states: “. . , It should be made clear that
the privacy to which all persons may lay
claim is not a sterile or outmoded individual
assertion, It is not a claim restricted to an
aristocratic class, or to a few eccentrics who
might prefer to resign from the human
race ...A freedom to determine the extent
to which others may share in one’s spiritual
nature, and the ability to protect one’s be-
liefs, thoughts, emotions, and sensations from
unreasonable intrusions are of the very
essence of life in a free society.”

We see then that the Constitution of the
United States provides a bulwark against
those who would turn America into a total
surveillance society. But there are always
forces at work to invade privacy in an al-
legedly nobie pursuit or for other less ad-
mirable reasons, At the very beginning of
the American experience, many saw a threat
to our infant free republic in the proposed
Alien and Sedition Laws. In the debate over
those laws in the 5th Congress, Representa-
tive Edward Livingston made a ringing dec-
laration of what would happen to society

should the Federal Government be empow-
ered to strip away protections of the in-
dividual. In a passionate speech, he made one
of the most accurate predictions of the con-
sequences of future actions against freedom.
In 1798, Livingston said:

“The system of espionage being thus estab-
lished, the country will swarm with inform-
ers, spies, delators, and all the odious reptile
tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic
power. The hours of the most unsuspected
confidence, the intimacies of friendship or
the recesses of domestic retirement will af-
ford no security. The companion whom you
most trust, the friend in whom you must
confide, are tempted to betray your impru-
dence; to misrepresent your words; to convey
them, distorted by calumny, to the secret
tribunal where suspicion is the only evidence
that is heard.”

Let me repeat; that was 1798, not 1984!

To make the Bill of Rights a Hving entity
in a technologically sophisticated world re-
quires unceasing vigilence. The dangers
described by Representative Livingston in
the 5th Congress are still facing those of us
in the 9ist Congress. For the United States
now has the capacity to establish a system of
strict records surveillance which was, and is,
the hallmark. of European totalitarian states
and which was specifically rejected by our
Founding Fathers. The files of federal, state,
local and private agencies bulge with dossiers
on Americans. A perfectly. understandable
thrust toward making the operation of these
agencies more efficient and economical has
encouraged the use of computerized informa-
tion systems. The most recent investigation
of my Special Subcommittee on Invasion of
Privacy brought forth the statement that one
private credit organization confidently ex-
pects to have the record of every man,
woman, and child in the country within its
computerized system in five years. An individ-
ual’s credit history can be retrieved and read
anywhere in the country within two minutes
after the request is initiated,

This tremendous ability to store and re-
trieve data has a basic effect on America.
Throughout history, we have been known as
the nation of the second chance. Immigrants
flocked to our shores because we offered a
new beginning for people who found other
societies frustrating and repressive. Yet, the
abillty to weave a web of data around each
individual, to recall every event of a person's
past, threatens to make this a one chance
society.

In the same sense, we witnessed an inter-
nai migration in the 19th century. Our grow-
ing population could expand throughout our
unused lands within the borders of America,
The concept of a frontier was an essential
precondition to the expansiveness of the
American society and, as Frederick Jackson
Turner pointed out, helped shape the Ameri-
can character.

New space for the body created a new life
for the mind. .

This brings me to the final portion of my
speech this evening and to what I would
regard as its most significant sectien. The
argument over privacy is frequently confused
by the belief that it is space alone that is the
subject under discussion. This narrow em-
phasis permits the legitimate objection that
man is a social creature and that he demands
interaction with his fellows.

If privacy merely refers to a physical area,
this view is perfectly correct. Everyone knows
that city life lacks many of the comforte and
graces of rural life, and yet urbanization is
perhaps the central fact of population move-
ment throughout history. So it would be
foolish indeed to ignore the absolute neces-
sity for man to seek the company of neigh-
bors. Yet, most observers have found an
equally powerful counterforce and that is
withdrawal from society for certain periods.

In 1961, Sociologist Erving Goffman de-
écribed this basic conflict in these terms:

“Our sense of being a person can come
from being drawn into a wider social unit;
our sense of selfhood can arise through the

little ways in which we resist the pull. Our

status is backed by the solid buildings of the
world, whilé our sense of personal identity
often resides in the cracks,”

The concept of space for the health of the
societies of lower animals was the subject of
& brilliant book by Robert Ardrey. Published
in 1966, The Territorial Imperative sets forth
example after example of animal behavior
which suggests that the physical ordering
and control over space is a basic drive. This
powerful tnstinct in lower animals is shown
to precede mating and is demonstrated as the
major way in which one individual differ-
entlates iteelf from the rest of his species.
Ardrey makes a compelling argument that
demands the conclusion that what operates
60 universally in animals is relevant to un-
derstanding human nature as well.

I would like to suggest to you that the per-
sonality needs a psychological living space
just as the body insists upon an area of phys-
ical autonomy. I believe that The Territo-
rial Imperative in lower animals has a coun-
terpart in man which I call The Intellectual
Imperative. The Intellectual Imperative is as
essential to mental health as The Territorial
Imperative is to a sense of physical security.
In my view, psychological integrity is as im-
portant as bodily integrity. A stable society
cannot be constructed or maintained if iNe-
gal searches and seizures are permitted
through a man’s ideas and beliefs while his
Papers and effects are protected by law.

When I first raised questions about the
validity of the use of the polygraph five years
ago, I called it “mental wiretapping.” Of
course, the fact that lie detectors just did not
work at any reliable level of accuracy was
important to my opposition as well as the
fact that the training of the polygraph op-
erator was frequently so incredibly sloppy.
But, basically, what I objected to was that
there ts a portion of man that no one can
invade without the full approval of the indi-
Vidual. In no case should it be a precondi-
tion for employment at lower or clerical
Jevels, which was the situation I uncovered
in certain federal agencies in 1964. :

In 1958, Pope Pius XII made this state-
ment: “And just as it ts illicit to appropriate
another’s goods or to make an attempt on
his bodily integrity without his consent, so
it Js not permissible to enter into his inner
domain against his will, whatever the tech-
nique or method used.”

Similarly, the spread of information about
@ man must be under his control. Naturally,
in the pursuit of a stable society, law must be
maintained and the tools that science and
technology have provided us must be used
to preserve the rights of those who obey the
law. But, as I believe I have demonstrated,
technology frequently operates by its own
laws which are occasionally peripheral, at
best, to the purposes of society. To conduct
& normal, healthy life a man must have pri-
vacy and this means that he must have areas
where he is assured of protection from what
Livingston called “the odious reptile tribe.”

Professor Charles Fried of the Harvard Law
School puts the need for privacy in extreme
terms. He says:

“Privacy is the necessary context for rela-
tionships we would hardly be human if we

had to do without—the relationships of love,
friendship, and trust. In is the sharing
of information about one’s actions, beliefs, or
emotions which one does not share with all
and which one has the right not to share
with anyone. By conferring this right, privacy
‘treates the moral capital which we spend in
friendship and love.”

In my concept of The Intellectual Impera-
tive, man may choose those in whom he
Wishes to confide. He may discuss gny issue
in any terms he may desire and be assured
that an indiscretion of phrase or even an in-
decency of thought will remain private. A
space of psychological control permits ideas
to be discussed freely and openly within his
territory and with the guarantee that strict
public accountability will not foliow. It is
just this blurring of the public and the pri-
vate which makes invasion of privacy so
obnoxious to personal integrity and to
civilized society. No idea springs, like Athena
from the head of Zeus, fully formed. The
translation of idea into insight, of knowledge
into wisdom, follows as many different
courses as there are individuals who think. It
is impossible to produce a flow chart which
can predict or channel the maturation of a
thought. -

This leads to the psychological truth that
the betrayal of intimacy is, in egsence. the
greatest invasion of privacy. But it is equally
harmful to society if the experiences of pri-
vate life become shallow. If you cannot reside
in an atmosphere of security, if you must
remain guarded—suspicious of those in whom
you confide—you diminish the commitments
of private life. And without something to de-
fend, without relationships of trust and love
in your private life, you are going to have lit-
tle reason to strongly defend the public
welfare.

What I am saying ts that The Intellectual
Imperative permits man to strengthen his
belief in abstractions like patriotism by
creating personal realities like friendship and
trust. I believe that my concept of the Intel-
lectual Imperative leads to the point that
you cannot love anything, if you are afraid
to reveal yourself to another.

The control of the flow of information
about yourself, about your actions, about
your beliefs, is then seen as a crucial aspect
of a dynamic society. Urban mass culture
has destroyed for most of us the opportunity
to exercise freely The Territorial Impera-
tive; the advance of computer and other
technologies threatens The Intellectual Im-
perative. Physically, we are constantly in a
crowd; intellectually, technology has fro-
vided devices to make our forgotten actions
and our unacknowledged thoughts known to
the crowd. This is, I believe, what is meant
by depersonalization and dehumanization
and, as I have tried to suggest earlier, may
be a root cause for the violence in our nation.

The American use of technology has made
man immense—within the next few months,
a human footstep will be on the surface of
the moon. Yet technology has also diminished
man and threatens to make him less than
human. While every computer card received

from a large organization as a bill, a financial
statement, or a summation of personal his-
tory carries the warning “Do not fold, muti-
late, or spindle,” individual man receives
little assurance from the sender that he him-
self will not be folded, mutilated, and
spindled.

There are those who say that anyone who
criticizes the forms taken by the new tech-
nology is somehow against technology and,
therefore, progress. There is the implication
that the expression of some of the views I
have given you this evening would have
caused me to oppose the use of indoor plumb-
ing because it destroyed a society based _
around the village pump. This 1s slmply not
true. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I come to
praise the new technology, not to bury it. But
at the same time, we must praise man and
see that he is not buried under computer-
generated data. Computer professionals by
and large know the limitations of their ma-
chines and they Know that the output of a
computer is dependent on the quality of the
data fed tn. The standard acronym is GIGO:
Garbage In: Garbage Out. My purpose is to
disabuse nonprofessionals of the notion that
it really means Garbage In, Gospel Out.

At the beginning of this speech, I con-
structed a slightly facetious example of tech-
nology as God and man as humble pent-
tent. Some of the most vocal defenders of
the unevaluated use of technology sound
very much as if they truly believe they are
theologians and that they are justifying the
operations immutable laws, which are un-
changeable because they are the dicta of
divinity.

I take quite the opposite view. Tools are
for the use of man and their valid use does
not harm man; only their abuse does. Al-
though I may be widely Known as a com-
puter critic, I firmly believe that the forceful
assertion of privacy need not be contradic-
tory to the fullest exploitation of the miracle
of electronic data processing. The computer
is as vital to efficient government as civil
liberties are to the citizen’s confidence in
democratic government. This search for a
balance, the attempt to isolate and control
the toxic elements in the tonic of technol-
ogy, is now a major challenge. For, basically,
it challenges our faith in ourselves, it chal-
lenges our ability to use our skills in the
service of man.

John Diebold has probably coined more
money from the new technology than any
other man; he even coined the word “auto-
mation.” In 1964, he made the statement
with which I would like to close my speech.

“The problem of identifying and under-
standing goals to match the new means that
technology provides us is the central prob-
lem of our time—one of the greatest prob-
lems in human history. Its solution can be
one of the most exciting and one of the most
important areas for human activity. And the
time is now.”

In 1969, even more than ever, the time is
now.

EE