Taking Privacy Seriously : How to Create the Rights We Need While We Still Have Something to Protect

Other books remind us of what we already know-that privacy is under great pressure. James Rule provides a step-by-step plan�to create a significantly more private and authentically democratic world. �Taking Privacy Seriously�offers both a concise, hard-hitting assessment of the origins of today's privacy-eroding practices and a roadmap for creating robust new individual rights over our personal data. Rule�proposes eleven�key�reforms�in the control and use of personal information, all aimed at redressing the balance of power between ordinary citizens and data-hungry corporate and government institutions. � What a privacy-deprived America needs�most is not less technology, Rule argues, but�profound political realignment.�His eleven�proposed reforms range from launching a major public-works investment consisting of a series of websites publicly documenting the personal data uses of nearly all government and private institutions; to instating a right for any citizen to withdraw from any personal data system not required by law; to creating a universal�property right over commercial exploitation of data on oneself-so that no company or other organization could profit from use or sale of such data without permission. Succinct and compelling,�Taking Privacy Seriously�explains how we can refashion information�technologies so that they serve human needs, not the other way around.