A remarkably comprehensive and provocative collection of essays, Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape offers a penetrating and informative analysis of the interactions and tensions between information technology and privacy.
Edited by Philip Agre and Marc Rotenberg, this book provides a framework for developing information systems. The authors featured here are international experts in the technical, economic, and political aspects of privacy. Agre's introductory material lends considerable coherence to the book. Other essays include:
- Viktor Mayer-Schönberger discusses four generations of data protection in Europe; beginning with the early laws of the 1970s, he moves on to a greater awareness of individual rights, and then to a recognition of the right to informational self-determination, and finally to some of today's rather holistic approaches. This vital chapter shows Europe's longtime awareness of privacy risks.
- Robert Gellman muses on the viability and effectiveness of our privacy laws: "The problem is less a shortcoming of existing legal devices and more a failure of interest, incentive, and enforcement. If the will for better privacy rules develops, the law can provide a way to accomplish the objectives."
- In a very provocative chapter, Simon G. Davies reflects on the public interest and observes that privacy has been transformed from a right into a commodity. He concludes that "the loss of traditional privacy activism at a macro political level has imperiled an important facet of civil rights."
- David J. Phillips's "Cryptography, Secrets, and the Structuring of Trust" deals with a topic undergoing great flux, and thus is not so current as the other chapters. Nevertheless, it presents a fresh perspective. Discussion of the Clipper chip is historically interesting.
- David H. Flaherty, who is Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, considers the extent to which surveillance can be controlled, even in surveillance-prone societies.
- Rohan Samarajiva's "Interactivity as though Privacy Mattered" concludes with this ominous warning: "Once coercive surveillance becomes routinized and taken for granted, the prospects for privacy and trust-conducive outcomes are likely to be dim."
Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape, edited by Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg: US$25. The MIT Press: +1 (617) 625 8569.
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