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Print Price: $30.50

Format:
Hardback
224 pp.
5.5" x 8.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190939045

Publication date:
November 2021

Imprint: OUP US

Why Privacy Matters

Neil Richards

A much-needed corrective on what privacy is, why it matters, and how we can protect in an age when so many believe that the concept is dead.

Everywhere we look, companies and governments are spying on us - seeking information about us and everyone we know. Ad networks monitor our web-surfing to send us "more relevant" ads. The NSA screens our communications for signs of radicalism. Schools track students' emails to stop school shootings. Cameras guard every street corner and traffic light, and drones fly in our skies. Databases of human information are assembled for purposes of "training" artificial intelligence programs designed to predict everything from traffic patterns to the location of undocumented migrants. We're even tracking ourselves, using personal electronics like Apple watches, Fitbits, and other gadgets that have made the "quantified self" a realistic possibility. As Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg once put it, "the Age of Privacy is over." But Zuckerberg and others who say "privacy is dead" are wrong. In Why Privacy Matters, Neil Richards explains that privacy isn't dead, but rather up for grabs.

Richards shows how the fight for privacy is a fight for power that will determine what our future will look like, and whether it will remain fair and free. If we want to build a digital society that is consistent with our hard-won commitments to political freedom, individuality, and human flourishing, then we must make a meaningful commitment to privacy. Privacy matters because good privacy rules can promote the essential human values of identity, power, freedom, and trust. If we want to preserve our commitments to these precious yet fragile values, we will need privacy rules. Richards explains why privacy remains so important and offers strategies that can help us protect it from the forces that are working to undermine it. Pithy and forceful, this is essential reading for anyone interested in a topic that sits at the center of so many current problems.

Readership : Scholars and students, legal and tech professionals, journalists, others interested in the law and theory of privacy.

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Neil Richards is one of the world's leading experts in privacy law, information law, and freedom of expression. He holds the Koch Distinguished Professorship at Washington University School of Law, where he co-directs the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law. He is also an affiliate scholar with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project, a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and a consultant and expert in privacy cases. Richards serves on the board of the Future of Privacy Forum and is a member of the American Law Institute. He is the author of Intellectual Privacy (Oxford).

Making Sense - Margot Northey
Intellectual Privacy - Neil Richards
Privacy - Leslie P. Francis and John G. Francis
We Know All About You - Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
51 Imperfect Solutions - Jeffrey Sutton
Between Truth and Power - Julie E. Cohen

Special Features

Explains what privacy is, what it isn't, and why it matters.
Dispels numerous myths about privacy, including the arguments that privacy is dead, that privacy is about ownership or control of data, and that young people don't care about privacy.
Identifies and analyzes four core values that privacy protects - identity, freedom, protection, and trust - and why they are so necessary for a healthy society.