There is no comprehensive federal privacy statute that protects personal information. Instead, a patchwork of federal laws and regulations govern the collection and disclosure of personal information and has been addressed by Congress on a sector-by-sector basis. Some contend that this patchwork of laws and regulations is insufficient to meet the demands of today's technology. Congress, the Obama Administration, businesses, public interest groups and citizens are all involved in the discussion of privacy solutions. This book examines some of these efforts with respect to the protection of personal information and provides a brief overview of selected recent developments in the area of federal privacy law.

In this collection of essays that represent original and interdisciplinary work, respected scholars address a number of privacy issues. These include how governmental and private sectors develop and deploy technologies that can pose serious compromises to the privacy of individuals and groups; how information and communication system designs pose threats to privacy; how we manage private concerns (child care, job leave, and identity) as public issues amenable to political action and shared awareness; and the fundamental asymmetry of power that exists between individuals and small groups on the one hand and large governmental and corporate entities on the other. Arranged in three sections law and policy; information technology; and information studies, history, and sociology Privacy in America: Interdisciplinary Perspectives will be useful to scholars, practitioners, and students in a variety of fields, including information science, library science, and information systems.

Matters of privacy have profoundly changed since electronic storage of information has become the norm. Consequently, policy-makers and legislators are trying to keep up with privacy challenges in the workplace, in healthcare, in surveillance, and on social networking sites. With Privacy: Defending an Illusion, Martin Dowding fills a very important gap in policy analysis and the teaching of privacy issues at the senior undergraduate and early graduate student level. In the first section of this book, Dowding recounts historical interpretations of privacy in a wide variety of socio-cultural circumstances. In the second section, the author addresses how information and communication technologies have changed our conceptions about privacy and redirected our focus from keeping information private to sharing it with many more people than we would have even a few years ago. Dowding also examines a variety of possible options for the future of privacy. The appendixes include seminal readings on relevant topics that should encourage debates about the nature of privacy and its problems. Overall, this book provides a solid background for defining and understanding privacy in a wide variety of contexts.

This book explores the use of Social Security Numbers (SSN) and Identity Theft. The SSN was created in 1936 for the purpose of tracking workers' earnings for benefits purposes. Since that time, however, SSN usage has expanded to encompass a myriad of purposes well beyond the operation of the Social Security system. This book describes how criminals acquire SSNs and how they use them to commit identity theft. How organisations such as financial institutions, insurers, universities, health care entities, government agencies, and innumerable other organisations use this nine-digit sequence as a default identifier is also examined. Furthermore, existing statutes, regulations and private sector efforts designed to protect SSNs are looked at, including data security and data breach notification laws. This book concludes with specific FTC recommendations, which address both the supply and demand aspects of the SSN problem by proposing actions that would make SSNs less available to identify thieves, and would make it more difficult for them to misuse those SSNs they are able to obtain. This is an edited, excerpted and augmented edition of a Federal Trade Commission and GAO publication.

This book describes the Total Information Awareness (TIA) programs in the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense, and related information access, collection, and protection laws. TIA is a new technology under development that plans to use data mining technologies to sift through personal transactions in electronic data to find patterns and associations connected to terrorist threats and activities. Data mining technologies are currently used by federal agencies for various purposes. DARPA has underway a five year research project to develop and integrate information technologies into a prototype system or systems to identify foreign terrorists for use by the intelligence, counterintelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security communities. Recent increased awareness about the existence of the TIA project provoked expressions of concern about the potential for the invasion of privacy of law-abiding citizens by the Government, and about the direction of the project by John Poindexter, a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair. While the law enforcement and intelligence communities argue that more sophisticated information gathering techniques are essential to combat today's sophisticated terrorists, civil libertarians worry that the Government's increased capability to assemble information will result in increased and unchecked government power, and the erosion of individual privacy.

Electronic information networks offer extraordinary advantages to business, government, and individuals in terms of power, capacity, speed, accessibility, and cost. But these same capabilities present substantial privacy issues. With an unprecedented amount of data available in digital format--which is easier and less expensive to access, manipulate, and store--others know more about you than ever before.

Consider this: data routinely collected about you includes your health, credit, marital, educational, and employment histories; the times and telephone numbers of every call you make and receive; the magazines you subscribe to and the books your borrow from the library; your cash withdrawals; your purchases by credit card or check; your electronic mail and telephone messages; where you go on the World Wide Web. The ramifications of such a readily accessible storehouse of information are astonishing.

Governments have responded to these new challenges to personal privacy in a wide variety of ways. At one extreme, the European Union in 1995 enacted sweeping regulation to protect personal information; at the other extreme, privacy law in the United States and many other countries is fragmented, inconsistent, and offers little protection for privacy on the internet and other electronic networks.

For all the passion that surrounds discussions about privacy, and the recent attention devoted to electronic privacy, surprisingly little consensus exists about what privacy means, what values are served--or compromised--by extending further legal protection to privacy, what values are affected by existing and proposed measures designed to protect privacy, and what principles should undergird a sensitive balancing of those values.

In this book, Fred Cate addresses these critical issues in the context of computerized information. He provides an overview of the technologies that are provoking the current privacy debate and discusses the range of legal issues that these technologies raise. He examines the central elements that make up the definition of privacy and the values served, and liabilities incurred, by each of those components. Separate chapters address the regulation of privacy in Europe and the United States. The final chapter identifies four sets of principles for protecting information privacy. The principles recognize the significance of individual and collective nongovernmental action, the limited role for privacy laws and government enforcement of those laws, and the ultimate goal of establishing multinational principles for protecting information privacy.

Privacy in the Information Age involves questions that cut across the fields of business, communications, economics, and law. Cate examines the debate in provocative, jargon-free, detail.

A practical, user-friendly handbook for understanding and protecting our personal data and digital privacy. Our Data, Ourselves addresses a common and crucial question: What can we as private individuals do to protect our personal information in a digital world? In this practical handbook, legal expert Jacqueline D. Lipton guides readers through important issues involving technology, data collection, and digital privacy as they apply to our daily lives. Our Data, Ourselves covers a broad range of everyday privacy concerns with easily digestible, accessible overviews and real-world examples. Lipton explores the ways we can protect our personal data and monitor its use by corporations, the government, and others. She also explains our rights regarding sensitive personal data like health insurance records and credit scores, as well as what information retailers can legally gather, and how. Who actually owns our personal information? Can an employer legally access personal emails? What privacy rights do we have on social media? Answering these questions and more, Our Data, Ourselves provides a strategic approach to assuming control over, and ultimately protecting, our personal information.

BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2022, NEW STATESMAN & CITY AM Chosen as one of the Financial Time's Best Summer Books of 2022 Longlisted for the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing 'Compelling, powerful and necessary.' Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism 'Fascinating' Guardian Without a moment's pause, we share our most intimate thoughts with trillion-dollar tech companies. Their algorithms categorize us and jump to troubling conclusions about who we are. They also shape our everyday thoughts, choices and actions - from who we date to whether we vote. But this is just the latest front in an age-old struggle. Part history and part manifesto, Freedom to Think explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. Connecting the dots from Galileo to Alexa, human rights lawyer Susie Alegre charts the history and fragility of our most important human right: freedom of thought. Filled with shocking case-studies across politics, criminal justice, and everyday life, this ground-breaking book shows how our mental freedom is under threat like never before. Bold and radical, Alegre argues that only by recasting our human rights for the digital age can we safeguard our future.

For the first time in paperback we bring you the authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy as well as for anyone who's ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing-whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence. Written by the world's leading experts on finding people and helping people avoid being found, How to Disappear covers everything from tools for disappearing to discovering and eliminating the nearly invisible tracks and clues we tend to leave wherever we go. Learn the three keys to disappearing, all about your electronic footprints, the dangers and opportunities of social networking sites, and how to disappear from a stalker. Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan provide field-tested methods for maintaining privacy, as well as tactics and strategies for protecting personal information and preventing identity theft. They explain and illustrate key tactics such as misinformation (destroying all the data known about you); disinformation (creating fake trails); and, finally, reformation-the act of getting you from point A to point B without leaving clues. Ahearn illustrates every step with real-life stories of his fascinating career, from undercover work to nab thieving department store employees to a stint as a private investigator; and, later, as a career "skip tracer" who finds people who don't want to be found. In 1997, when news broke of President Bill Clinton's dalliance with a White House intern, Ahearn was hired to find her. When Oscar statuettes were stolen in Beverly Hills, Ahearn pinpointed a principal in the caper to help solve the case. When Russell Crowe threw a telephone at a hotel clerk in 2005, Ahearn located the victim and hid him from the media. An indispensable resource not just for those determined to become utterly anonymous, but also for just about anyone in the brave new world of on-line information, How to Disappear sums up Ahearn's dual philosophy: Don't break the law, but know how to protect yourself.

Questions of privacy are critical to the study of contemporary media and society. When we're more and more connected to devices and to content, it's increasingly important to understand how information about ourselves is being collected, transmitted, processed, and mediated. Privacy and the Media equips students to do just that, providing a comprehensive overview of both the theory and reality of privacy and the media in the 21st Century. Offering a rich overview of this crucial and topical relationship, Andy McStay: Explores the foundational topics of journalism, the Snowden leaks, and encryption by companies such as Apple Considers commercial applications including behavioural advertising, big data, algorithms, and the role of platforms such as Google and Facebook Introduces the role of the body with discussions of emotion, wearable media, peer-based privacy, and sexting Encourages students to put their understanding to work with suggestions for further research, challenging them to explore how privacy functions in practice. Privacy and the Media is not a polemic on privacy as 'good' or 'bad', but a call to assess the detail and the potential implications of contemporary media technologies and practices. It is essential reading for students and researchers of digital media, social media, digital politics, and the creative and cultural industries. 'Privacy and the Media is a thoughtful survey of the privacy landscape. McStay reviews the intricate tensions and seeming contradictions to offer an accessible book for anyone curious about the contemporary debates in privacy.' - danah boyd, author of It's Complicated and founder of Data & Society 'McStay's great achievement here is to confront many of the pertinent and complex questions about media and privacy in a style that is both authoritative and easy to read... His book will prove an excellent companion for all students of this fascinating and crucial topic.' - Mireille Hildebrandt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel 'Clearly and accessibly written, this book is a great resource for anyone interested in the broad range of ways in which privacy and contemporary media are entangled and in the big picture of privacy/media relations today... I will definitely be assigning it for my students.' - Helen Kennedy, University of Sheffield

Questions of privacy are critical to the study of contemporary media and society. When we're more and more connected to devices and to content, it's increasingly important to understand how information about ourselves is being collected, transmitted, processed, and mediated. Privacy and the Media equips students to do just that, providing a comprehensive overview of both the theory and reality of privacy and the media in the 21st Century. Offering a rich overview of this crucial and topical relationship, Andy McStay: Explores the foundational topics of journalism, the Snowden leaks, and encryption by companies such as Apple Considers commercial applications including behavioural advertising, big data, algorithms, and the role of platforms such as Google and Facebook Introduces the role of the body with discussions of emotion, wearable media, peer-based privacy, and sexting Encourages students to put their understanding to work with suggestions for further research, challenging them to explore how privacy functions in practice. Privacy and the Media is not a polemic on privacy as 'good' or 'bad', but a call to assess the detail and the potential implications of contemporary media technologies and practices. It is essential reading for students and researchers of digital media, social media, digital politics, and the creative and cultural industries. 'Privacy and the Media is a thoughtful survey of the privacy landscape. McStay reviews the intricate tensions and seeming contradictions to offer an accessible book for anyone curious about the contemporary debates in privacy.' - danah boyd, author of It's Complicated and founder of Data & Society 'McStay's great achievement here is to confront many of the pertinent and complex questions about media and privacy in a style that is both authoritative and easy to read... His book will prove an excellent companion for all students of this fascinating and crucial topic.' - Mireille Hildebrandt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel 'Clearly and accessibly written, this book is a great resource for anyone interested in the broad range of ways in which privacy and contemporary media are entangled and in the big picture of privacy/media relations today... I will definitely be assigning it for my students.' - Helen Kennedy, University of Sheffield

Analyzing and Securing Social Networks focuses on the two major technologies that have been developed for online social networks (OSNs): (i) data mining technologies for analyzing these networks and extracting useful information such as location, demographics, and sentiments of the participants of the network, and (ii) security and privacy technologies that ensure the privacy of the participants of the network as well as provide controlled access to the information posted and exchanged by the participants. The authors explore security and privacy issues for social media systems, analyze such systems, and discuss prototypes they have developed for social media systems whose data are represented using semantic web technologies. These experimental systems have been developed at The University of Texas at Dallas. The material in this book, together with the numerous references listed in each chapter, have been used for a graduate-level course at The University of Texas at Dallas on analyzing and securing social media. Several experimental systems developed by graduate students are also provided. The book is divided into nine main sections: (1) supporting technologies, (2) basics of analyzing and securing social networks, (3) the authors' design and implementation of various social network analytics tools, (4) privacy aspects of social networks, (5) access control and inference control for social networks, (6) experimental systems designed or developed by the authors on analyzing and securing social networks, (7) social media application systems developed by the authors, (8) secure social media systems developed by the authors, and (9) some of the authors' exploratory work and further directions.

Who Are The Cypherpunks?
This is the unauthorized telling of the revolutionary cryptography story behind the motion picture "The Fifth Estate "in theatres this October, and "We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks," a documentary out now.
WikiLeaks brought to light a new form of whistleblowing, using powerful cryptographic code to hide leakers' identities while they spill the private data of government agencies and corporations. But that technology has been evolving for decades in the hands of hackers and radical activists, from the libertarian enclaves of Northern California to Berlin to the Balkans. And the secret-killing machine continues to evolve beyond WikiLeaks, as a movement of hacktivists aims to obliterate the world's institutional secrecy.
"Forbes "journalist Andy Greenberg has traced its shadowy history from the cryptography revolution of the 1970s to Wikileaks founding hacker Julian Assange, Anonymous, and beyond.
This is the story of the code and the characters--idealists, anarchists, extremists--who are transforming the next generation's notion of what activism can be.
With unrivaled access to such major players as Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and WikiLeaks' shadowy engineer known as the Architect, never before interviewed, Greenberg unveils the world of politically-motivated hackers--who they are and how they operate.

The information revolution has brought with it the technology for easily collecting personal information about individuals, a facility that inherently threatens personal privacy. Colin J. Bennett here examines political responses to the data protection issue in four Western democracies, comparing legislation that the United States, Britain, West Germany, and Sweden forged from the late 1960's to the 1980's to protect citizens from unwanted computer dissemination of personal information. Drawing on an extensive body of interviews and documentary evidence, Bennett considers how the four countries, each with different cultural traditions and institutions, formulated fair information policy. He finds that their computer regulatory laws are based on strikingly similar statutory principles, but that enforcement of these principles varies considerably: the United States relies on citizen initiative and judicial enforcement; Britain uses a registration system; Germany has installed an ombudsman; and Sweden employs a licensing system. Tracing the impact of key social, political, and technological factors on the ways different political systems have controlled the collection and communication of information, Bennett also deepens our understanding of policymaking theory. Regulating Privacy will be welcomed by political sciences-especially those working in comparative public policy, American politics, organization theory, and technology and politics-political economists, information systems analysts, and others concerned with issues of privacy.

Protecting the privacy of student data when bringing technology into the classroom is one of the toughest organizational challenges facing schools and districts today. Parent and legislator concerns about how school systems protect the privacy of student data are at an all-time high. School systems must navigate complex federal and state regulations, understand how technology providers collect and protect student data, explain those complexities to parents, and provide the reassurance the community needs that the student information will remain safe. Student Data Privacy: Building a School Compliance Program provides solutions for all of these challenges and more. It is a step-by-step journey through the process of building the policies and practices to protect student data, and shifting the organizational culture to prioritize privacy while still taking advantage of the tremendous benefits that technology has to offer in the modern classroom.