This 1981 Nova episode starts with Nixon's radio address about the American Right of Privacy. "A system that fails to respect its citizens' right to privacy fails to respect the citizens themselves."

It discusses cryptography, including public key cryptography, describes worries about the possibility for abuse, the use of personalized data for targeted political mailings and marketing, and the Minitel introduction on Saint-Malo. There's also a staged pen test and a kid who get caught breaking into a university computer.

One scene mentions how people are worried about the tracking possible by using ATM. The banking rep says that would require computers which are 1,000 times more powerful.