Privacy'S Blueprint

Every day, Internet users interact with technologies designed to undermine their privacy. Social media apps, surveillance technologies, and the Internet of Things are all built in ways that make it hard to guard personal information. And the law says this is okay because it is up to users to protect themselves—even when the odds are deliberately stacked against them.In Privacy’s Blueprint, Woodrow Hartzog pushes back against this state of affairs, arguing that the law should require software and hardware makers to respect privacy in the design of their products. Current legal doctrine treats technology as though it were value-neutral: only the user decides whether it functions for good or ill. But this is not so. As Hartzog explains, popular digital tools are designed to expose people and manipulate users into disclosing personal information.Against the often self-serving optimism of Silicon Valley and the inertia of tech evangelism, Hartzog contends that privacy gains will come from better rules for products, not users. The current model of regulating use fosters exploitation. Privacy’s Blueprint aims to correct this by developing the theoretical underpinnings of a new kind of privacy law responsive to the way people actually perceive and use digital technologies. The law can demand encryption. It can prohibit malicious interfaces that deceive users and leave them vulnerable. It can require safeguards against abuses of biometric surveillance. It can, in short, make the technology itself worthy of our trust.

[A] smart new book… [W]ill repay the attention of designers, privacy professionals, and anyone who wants to learn how design guided by strengthened laws and regulations might help us emerge from today’s swirl of privacy problems., Deceptive design nudges, tricks, and goads you into sharing more than you might intend to online, Hartzog argues in his new book… And when you think you’re in control of your own data, you rarely are., Privacy’s Blueprint is a real tour de force, introducing a rigorous structure for multiple dimensions of privacy protections., Filled with fascinating examples and written in a lively and accessible way, Privacy’s Blueprint is the definitive chronicle of Privacy by Design. This is one of the most important books about privacy in our times., A bold and innovative privacy agenda and a beautifully written book. Hartzog demonstrates how and why privacy design is about power and politics.

Woodrow Hartzog is Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University School of Law and College of Computer and Information Science.