LECTURE ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW FALL 2012 DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER SERIES WHAT MUST WE HIDE: THE ETHICS OF PRIVACY AND THE ETHOS OF DISCLOSURE
ANITA L. ALLEN'

I. INTRODUCTION We live in an era of persotial revelation. We are preoccupied by seeking, gathering, and disclosing information about others and ourselves. In the age of revelation, individuals and enterprises are fond of ferreting out what is btiried away. We are fond of broadcasting what we know, think, do, and feel; and we are motivated by business and pleasure because we care about friendship, kinship, health, wealth, education, politics, justice, and culture. A lot of this has to do with technology, of course. We live at a historical moment characterized by the wide availability of multiple modes of communication and stored data, easily and frequently accessed. Our communications are capable of disclosing breadths and depths of personal, personally identifiable, and sensitive information to many people rapidly. In this era of revelation—dominated by portable electronics, intemet social media, reality television, and traditional talk radio—^many of us are losing our sense of privacy, our taste for privacy, and our willingness to respect privacy. Is this set of losses a bad thing? If it is a bad thing, what can be done about it? My refiections on these questions begin with a series of diverse examples from the past several years. The examples illustrate the emergent ethos of our revelatory era. The first and second examples portray voluntary self-revelation for amusement and monetary gain; a third and fourth example depict revelations conceming others, motivated by a desire for amusement in one case and geopolitical justice in another. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives elected by the people of New
Anita L. Allen, J.D., Ph.D.,