A Summary On Privacy

Privacy on the Internet is a widely discussed issue in today’s world. Many journal articles and books have been written based on this subject. One of these materials is Privacy Lost: How Technology is Endangering Your Privacy, which was written by David Holtzman and foreword by Senator Evan Bayh. Since it is divided into six parts, and each part consists of chapters that grasp an organized list of ideas, the book is very easy to follow. You don’t have to be a technologist in order to understand it.
In his book Holtzman discusses how new technology threatens our privacy and how the law is incapable of protecting us. Holtzman has received a B.S. in Computer Science (326). He has worked as a security advisor in several organizations (326). By restating the title of the book in the introduction Holtzman claims that having no control over our personal information has resulted in the loss of privacy (xix). As Senator Evan Bayh mentioned in the foreword, the book examines the thin border “between protecting the United States and protecting our civil rights” (vi). Altogether, the main point of Privacy Lost is to deliver the message that “you have the right to control information about yourself” (xxv).
The first chapter outlines ways modern technology is violating privacy. Holtzman starts this chapter by presenting various definitions of “privacy”. The interpretation of privacy conflicts due to cultural, geographical, and generational perspectives. But Holtzman sees three basic ideas behind this complex structure: “seclusion, solitude, and self-determination” (4).
Later in the chapter, Holtzman goes on by describing the seven violations against privacy, which he calls “sins”. First comes the sin of intrusion, which is the unwanted encro...

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... (86). By the help of intelligent profiling software, computers guess and place people in certain categories based on already obtainable information (83). If someone is given a wrong label by incorrectly being assigned to a category, it is really hard to get rid of it. Companies use profiling systems to discriminate customers with bad reputation, even if the person is innocent.
Chapter five in Privacy Lost starts the third part of the book. It focuses on the protection of privacy through the lens of legal structure. In this chapter Holtzman argues that laws can’t keep up with technology advances. Before starting to discuss the connection between privacy and law, Holtzman perfectly states that the word “privacy” hasn’t been used in the U.S. Constitution. “Absent adequate legal protection” presents problems in court when citizens claim the right to be protected (94).