Review of "The Assault on Privacy, by Arthur R. Miller." University of Michigan Press, 1971

If, from the title, the reader expects this book to be a muckraking examination of the impact of modern technology on privacy he will be quickly disabused. Assault o n Privacy is a careful, accurate and largely dispassionate vie w of the relationship between computers and privacy. Since the book is intended for a general audience the description s of computers and systems using computers will be old ha t to data processors. The chapters describing the tenuou s legal concept of privacy were of greatest interest to this reviewer and were well done. The chapter describin g psychological testing repeats the standard criticisms without asking whether tests better serve the testee than interviews or credentials. The efficiency expert favors a National Data Bank as a way of avoiding the unnecessary cost of maintaining som e 1500 separate federal government data banks. The human-ist rues the loss of privacy. Miller balances these concept s by suggesting that there is little privacy in the presen t arrangement and that the National Data Bank might b e viable if adequate legal safeguards were established. Every data processor using consumer files should read thi s book. First, because he is a consumer. Second, because h e needs to know the criticisms of his profession. Lastly, because if data processors understand the issues they may b e able to design efficient and private systems. Dear Sir , Though it may be a little late, I want to make som e comments on the Spring 1972 edition of DATA BASE. The article "Performance Evaluation and the Managemen t of Information Services" dealt with a lot of techniques fo r evaluating hardware (computer systems) and software. What I didn't find in the article : Many companies have t o compare Data Base Management Systems to make thei r choice of the systems which can be leased on the market. There was no comment at all on this special problem. Is i t already solved in the USA? In the literature available to m e I haven't found any article which extensively in practic e deals with the requirements for an ideal system (excep t perhaps DATA BASE, Vol. 3, No. 3 by Mr. Van Cour t Hare, Jr. and some standards like CODASYL "Feature Analysis . . ." or FRY/GOSDEN or DOWKANT), with the influence of the commercial problems to be solved, the analysi s and …