Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape [Hardcover]

Philip E. Agre (Editor), Marc Rotenberg (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 1997

Privacy is the capacity to negotiate social relationships by controlling access to personal information. As laws, policies, and technological design increasingly structure people's relationships with social institutions, individual privacy faces new threats and new opportunities. Over the last several years, the realm of technology and privacy has been transformed, creating a landscape that is both dangerous and encouraging. Significant changes include large increases in communications bandwidths; the widespread adoption of computer networking and public-key cryptography; mathematical innovations that promise a vast family of protocols for protecting identity in complex transactions; new digital media that support a wide range of social relationships; a new generation of technologically sophisticated privacy activists; a massive body of practical experience in the development and application of data-protection laws; and the rapid globalization of manufacturing, culture, and policy making.

The essays in this book provide a new conceptual framework for the analysis and debate of privacy policy and for the design and development of information systems. The authors are international experts in the technical, economic, and political aspects of privacy; the book's strength is its synthesis of the three. The book provides equally strong analyses of privacy issues in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Contributors:
Philip E. Agre, Victoria Bellotti, Colin J. Bennett, Herbert Burkert, Simon G. Davies, David H. Flaherty, Robert Gellman, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, David J. Phillips, Rohan Samarajiva.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This series of 10 scholarly essays lays a foundation for understanding the current state of technology-based privacy issues. The diverse group of contributors encompasses the fields of communications, human-computer interaction, law, political science, and sociology. Each contributor provides a capsule view of a privacy concern from a standpoint of where things now stand and what bodes for the future. The book's most prevalent theme focuses on how advances in cybertechnology have led to greater threats to personal privacy, but have also led to greater promise for privacy protection. For example, editor Philip E. Agre's opening essay looks at the concept of a "Mirror World," where computer technology mirrors everything important happening in the real world.

Another contributor, Victoria Bellotti, examines multimedia environments, where work environments are wired for video and audio communication, and how individuals within them can be protected from unwelcome eyes and ears. Colin Bennett looks at how much of the world may be moving towards similar privacy protection standards. Other issues include varieties of privacy-enhancing technologies, the challenge of controlling surveillance, the effectiveness of privacy laws, and cryptography. The final chapter, "Interactivity as Though Privacy Matters," belongs to Rohan Samarajiva, who looks at the prospects for limited consensual surveillance between vendors and customers.

From Library Journal

This is a collection of essays representing European, Canadian, and U.S. points of view on how technology is changing our understanding of what is private. Topics under review range from global policies for personal data, to privacy and multimedia, to privacy as a commodity rather than a right, to whether privacy is even possible in our postmodern world. While this is not easy reading, it is a solid, nonpolemical primer on a hugely important topic. Recommended for all academic libraries and most large public libraries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First edition. edition (September 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026201162X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262011624
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,060,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An overview, February 10, 2000

By 

john r rice - See all my reviews

This review is from: Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape (Paperback)

This book is somewhat slanted toward "technology is bad" but not excessively so. The focus is on political issues and opinions. How well one likes these chapters depends on one's political leaning; few of the chapters manage to be balanced. The one chapter on technical matters is a nice but simple introduction to computer security. Many chapters have long reference lists for further study.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More balanced view than many treatments., February 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape (Paperback)

From Virginia Postrel's pollyannish embrace of technology to Reg Whitakers musings of government devolving power (the state withering away-an old notion yet to be validated by experience) to Jerry Furland's utterly terrifying vision, this latest entry, "Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape" at least allows that the jury is still out on this issue. Except for Furland, ("Transfer-the end of the beginning")each falls short of addressing what one can "DO" with this new technology and actually provides a credible blueprint in novel form. I recommend each of these authors, but I put my money on Furland being right.