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JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 2 (2012): 103-106.
BOOK REVIEW
DANIEL J. SOLOVE
NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2011
Privacy has certainly been in the news in recent times, with citizens (and their political representatives) becoming concerned about the use of their data by the companies that provide the information and communications services they increasingly crave and depend upon. Policy experts and government watchdogs have also been paying close attention to privacy issues since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, after which government surveillance, searches, and seizures increased dramatically. Indeed, in recent history the average person is facing relentless pressure, often without conscious knowledge, to sacrifice privacy for the sake of convenience or security.
In this very readable and occasionally chilling book, privacy expertand law professor Daniel J. Solove, of George WashingtonUniversity, offers the latest knowledge on how lawmakers,corporations, and courts have gradually chipped away at the privacy rights that many Americans incorrectly assume to be protected by the Constitution. Via an analysis that is largely based on the Fourth Amendment, Solove finds that it is time for Americans to understand not just what privacy rights they have, but what privacy rights they do not have. Solove also claims convincingly that even though this book is focused on American law, the modern debate over privacy (or the lack thereof) is universal.
In his Preface, Solove explains that this book was inspired by public comments he received for an online essay he wrote titled Ive Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misperceptions of Privacy. Given the nature of the comments received from readers of all political opinions and knowledge levels, Solove determined that most Americans thanks to mainstream political rhetoric consider privacy and security to be a zero-sum game, in which one must be sacrificed for the other. In times of conflict, when security is a high priority, the average person is told that personal privacy must be sacrificed for the greater good. Solove declares this to be a false dichotomy and spends most of the book
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VOL. 2 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 104 debunking it. Subsequently, Solove begins the main body of the book with the most common arguments he has heard on the matter of...