The Fight for Privacy
Protecting Dignity, Identity and Love in the Digital Age
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Devastating and urgent, this book could not be more timely' Caroline Criado Perez, award-winning and bestselling author of Invisible Women
Danielle Citron takes the conversation about technology and privacy out of the boardrooms and op-eds to reach readers where we are - in our bathrooms and bedrooms; with our families and our lovers; in all the parts of our lives we assume are untouchable - and shows us that privacy, as we think we know it, is largely already gone.
The boundary that once protected our intimate lives from outside interests is an artefact of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first, we have embraced a vast array of technology that enables constant access and surveillance of the most private aspects of our lives. From non-consensual pornography, to online extortion, to the sale of our data for profit, we are vulnerable to abuse -- and our laws have failed miserably to keep up.
With vivid examples drawn from interviews with victims, activists and lawmakers from around the world, The Fight for Privacy reveals the threat we face and argues urgently and forcefully for a reassessment of privacy as a human right. As a legal scholar and expert, Danielle Citron is the perfect person to show us the way to a happier, better protected future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
UVA law professor Citron (Hate Crimes in Cyberspace) warns in this persuasive and impassioned call for substantive legal protections for private data that "memories of our intimate lives are being created against our will by perpetrators who intrude on the seclusion that we expect, want and deserve." Noting that "intimate data gets captured whenever we browse, search, or use apps," Citron contends that the law "hasn't caught up to address the powerful roles that apps play in our lives." She cautions that bad actors can "download malware onto our personal devices" and gain "access to our photos, texts and calendars," and her chilling examples of privacy invasions and acts of exploitation include the story of an Azerbaijani journalist who was threatened with the release of intimate videos if she did not stop investigating political corruption in her country. To address the problem, Citron recommends that "privacy violations should be treated as felonies" and proposes, among other corporate policies, that businesses only be allowed to collect personal data if it is used for "a legitimate business purpose that isn't outweighed by a significant risk to intimate privacy" and they have obtained "individuals' meaningful consent to collect their data." Accessible legal reasoning and galling case studies make this a cogent argument for reform.