Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions

It's difficult to avoid leaving trails of electronic data about our health, education, social lives, and shopping history, and that data is often stored, mined, and sold without our knowledge or consent. Sometimes our data is compromised owing to incompetence or malicious intent. This collection of short essays by privacy experts wrestles with the changing concept of privacy that comes with the ubiquitous sharing of personal information through social networks and sweeping data collection by government agencies and corporations. The writings discuss the court decisions that shape today's privacy protections and the ways in which related laws have failed to keep pace with technology. While Julia Angwin's Dragnet Nation contains a fascinating account of difficulties that she encounters in attempting to control her own personal data, this title's overarching perspective is thought provoking and urgently needed. Both books persuasively argue that people cannot easily control the use and dissemination of their personal information.