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Why Privacy Matters
Everywhere we look, companies and governments are spying on us—seeking information about us and everyone we know. Ad networks monitor our web-surfing to send us "more relevant" ads. Databases of human information are assembled for purposes of "training" artificial intelligence programs designed to predict everything from traffic patterns to the location of undocumented migrants. We're even tracking ourselves, using personal electronics like Apple watches, Fitbits, and other gadgets. As Mark Zuckerberg once put it, "the Age of Privacy is over." But Zuckerberg and others who say "privacy is dead" are wrong. In Why Privacy Matters, Neil Richards explains that privacy isn't dead, but rather up for grabs.
Richards shows how the fight for privacy is a fight for power that will determine what our future will look like, and whether it will remain fair and free. Privacy matters because good privacy rules can promote the essential human values of identity, power, freedom, and trust. If we want to preserve our commitments to these precious yet fragile values, we will need privacy rules. Richards explains why privacy remains so important and offers strategies that can help us protect it from the forces that are working to undermine it. Pithy and forceful, this is a must-listen for anyone interested in a topic that sits at the center of so many current problems.
Richards shows how the fight for privacy is a fight for power that will determine what our future will look like, and whether it will remain fair and free. Privacy matters because good privacy rules can promote the essential human values of identity, power, freedom, and trust. If we want to preserve our commitments to these precious yet fragile values, we will need privacy rules. Richards explains why privacy remains so important and offers strategies that can help us protect it from the forces that are working to undermine it. Pithy and forceful, this is a must-listen for anyone interested in a topic that sits at the center of so many current problems.
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Published July 19, 2022
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About the author
Neil Richards
140 books138 followersNeil Richards has worked as a producer and writer in TV and film, creating scripts for BBC, Disney, and Channel 4, and earning numerous Bafta nominations along the way.
He's also written script and story for over 20 video games including The Da Vinci Code and Starship Titanic, co-written with Douglas Adams, and consults around the world on digital storytelling.
His writing partnership with NYC-based Matt Costello goes back to the late 90's and the two have written many hours of TV together. Cherringham the series is their first crime fiction as co-writers.
An American and an Englishman writing crime stories with an American and an English hero - what took us so long?
He's also written script and story for over 20 video games including The Da Vinci Code and Starship Titanic, co-written with Douglas Adams, and consults around the world on digital storytelling.
His writing partnership with NYC-based Matt Costello goes back to the late 90's and the two have written many hours of TV together. Cherringham the series is their first crime fiction as co-writers.
An American and an Englishman writing crime stories with an American and an English hero - what took us so long?
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 24, 2021
This thought-provoking shows why privacy is important - and hard to get right. I loved the early framing about what privacy is (and isn’t), but disagreed with many conclusions towards the end.
I loved that this book:
* Stayed far more objective about privacy and corporations (especially in the tech industry) than other authors discussing privacy.
* Led with a great definition of privacy as “the degree to which human information is neither known nor used.”
* Offered 4 solid “foundations of trust” - discretion, honesty, perception, and loyalty
* Recognizes “consumers are often harried, distracted, short-sighted, cognitively impaired, impoverished, and sometimes even a bit drunk.
* Pulled examples beyond big tech companies like Target
But it also:
* Slid into tech-bashing in Part 2 and often singled out ‘digital services’
* Forced some weak conclusions like "privacy rules that sever the targeting laser beam could improve [online harms like polarization and fake information]"
* Ignores many tradeoffs - like how personalized advertising ends up showing people ads they like far more
Some thoughts and ?’s I’m left with:
1/ At what level is data-enabled personalization acceptable? A grocer learns about customer beverage preferences - and sends coupons for (say) Coke nationally, Pepsi in California, La Croix in San Francisco, and tea to @neilmrichards via Direct Mail. When does it cross the line?
2/ Why is “free-ness” important? If Twitter started charging $5/month, do the privacy questions around its data collection + advertising practices change? What about Amazon using the same practices, but as a company that sells products?
3/ How can “confidentiality” adjust how we think about privacy? Or about the ‘line’ that the grocer from /1/ shouldn’t cross? This felt like a really important early concept that didn’t get much airtime later.
4/ Does “surveillance” change when the human information is human-accessible (vs. machine-readable)? I’m comfortable with Strava tracking my bike rides because Strava employees can’t see them - I wouldn’t call it surveillance.
5/ What’s the right distinction between learning about people in aggregate (people who like tea also like Soccer) and using that knowledge (paying soccer stars to endorse tea brands? Mailing that ad to @neilmrichards?)
6/ Combining aggregation, confidentiality and “human-accessible” seems like an important distinction in privacy that I hadn’t considered until reading this book - and I’m wishing @neilmrichards explored this further in it!
I loved that this book:
* Stayed far more objective about privacy and corporations (especially in the tech industry) than other authors discussing privacy.
* Led with a great definition of privacy as “the degree to which human information is neither known nor used.”
* Offered 4 solid “foundations of trust” - discretion, honesty, perception, and loyalty
* Recognizes “consumers are often harried, distracted, short-sighted, cognitively impaired, impoverished, and sometimes even a bit drunk.
* Pulled examples beyond big tech companies like Target
But it also:
* Slid into tech-bashing in Part 2 and often singled out ‘digital services’
* Forced some weak conclusions like "privacy rules that sever the targeting laser beam could improve [online harms like polarization and fake information]"
* Ignores many tradeoffs - like how personalized advertising ends up showing people ads they like far more
Some thoughts and ?’s I’m left with:
1/ At what level is data-enabled personalization acceptable? A grocer learns about customer beverage preferences - and sends coupons for (say) Coke nationally, Pepsi in California, La Croix in San Francisco, and tea to @neilmrichards via Direct Mail. When does it cross the line?
2/ Why is “free-ness” important? If Twitter started charging $5/month, do the privacy questions around its data collection + advertising practices change? What about Amazon using the same practices, but as a company that sells products?
3/ How can “confidentiality” adjust how we think about privacy? Or about the ‘line’ that the grocer from /1/ shouldn’t cross? This felt like a really important early concept that didn’t get much airtime later.
4/ Does “surveillance” change when the human information is human-accessible (vs. machine-readable)? I’m comfortable with Strava tracking my bike rides because Strava employees can’t see them - I wouldn’t call it surveillance.
5/ What’s the right distinction between learning about people in aggregate (people who like tea also like Soccer) and using that knowledge (paying soccer stars to endorse tea brands? Mailing that ad to @neilmrichards?)
6/ Combining aggregation, confidentiality and “human-accessible” seems like an important distinction in privacy that I hadn’t considered until reading this book - and I’m wishing @neilmrichards explored this further in it!
May 3, 2022
This was HEAVY on the legal philosophizing and read at times like a textbook. That being said, it should be required reading for anyone who automatically checks the “I’ve read and agreed with the terms of service” box (everyone). I feel like I’ve taken a crash course in privacy law with a knowledgeable and likable professor.
June 20, 2025
I finally finished reading it - I started like 3 years ago?? But could never move past the first chapter. It’s a nice book but very long (sometimes unnecessarily so) and contains paragraphs of yapping. Overall, I got some nice ideas and academics I can cite for my thesis lol
July 1, 2024
Very much a Privacy 101 kind of book, and nothing it says will be surprising for digital rights advocates, but it’s a good primer on an important subject for someone new to the field.
September 22, 2024
hundrevis av side men yapping om personvern. til tider tørt som et knekkebrød, men sitt igjen med gode refleksjona og masse kunnskap om koffer personvern e viktig
December 12, 2022
A refresher on how and why we should think more before clicking "I agree" to terms of service. Richards delves into the legal philosophy behind (mainly) digital privacy and its creep into the norm since the birth of the internet. I found the chapter on how it impinges on one's ability to develop one's identity and explore different perspective, both to seek comfort and discomfort, as well as the chapter detailing the myths around why privacy matters (the creepy factor, the "nothing-to-hide") to be the most interesting and compelling.
However, it did sometimes veer into "old-man-yelling-at-cloud" territory when he brings up the younger generation. At some point, he mentioned something like how Millennials started the generational wars when they started "Okay Boomer." Are we forgetting the weekly articles that still exist by the way because no one knows what a millennial is that basically have proclaimed since 2006 about how lazy and awful and entitled we are and how we're responsible for the collapse of society? He seems to have this impression that younger folks are more careless about security and privacy when, as Bane would say, we were born in the darkness. And I'm being very generous to myself when I see "we." Gen Z and Alpha are even more adept than us elder millennials about protecting themselves, using VPNs, and fighting for their privacy. Yes, they also sometimes fall into vanity traps in social media, but they were not the generation that built the systems we have now. That is on Richards' generation - we're just trying to fix it.
However, it did sometimes veer into "old-man-yelling-at-cloud" territory when he brings up the younger generation. At some point, he mentioned something like how Millennials started the generational wars when they started "Okay Boomer." Are we forgetting the weekly articles that still exist by the way because no one knows what a millennial is that basically have proclaimed since 2006 about how lazy and awful and entitled we are and how we're responsible for the collapse of society? He seems to have this impression that younger folks are more careless about security and privacy when, as Bane would say, we were born in the darkness. And I'm being very generous to myself when I see "we." Gen Z and Alpha are even more adept than us elder millennials about protecting themselves, using VPNs, and fighting for their privacy. Yes, they also sometimes fall into vanity traps in social media, but they were not the generation that built the systems we have now. That is on Richards' generation - we're just trying to fix it.
March 10, 2023
This is an URGENT must must read for everybody. Best, most approachable, most empowering book I have read on big data- this book does not blame the working class for our lack of awareness around the selling and collection of our personal information, and does not encourage us to solve it by working tirelessly on our own to do the unpaid labour of arming ourselves against it- instead illustrates gently what is happening and how we can work together in community to make changes and protect our rights. Genuinely felt held by this book although it was simultaneously terrifying, I just really appreciated it because all the other data books I have read are much more victim blaming, and much more desensitised about what data actually is- also many other books are catered to business men mainly, this one is for the proletariat, for the hard working, terrified, regular person, making a huge huge threatening Kafka esque issue seem like something to be tackled from the ground up, highly recommend
October 12, 2022
[3.5] An interesting read chock-full of thought-provoking concepts, though it would have benefited from heavier editing.
Things I liked: the concept that “privacy is dead” is a self-serving, fatalistic myth; the importance of privacy in intellectual activities; the repudiation of consumer privacy choices; and the idea that we conflate corporate and individual rights.
“There is nothing magical about our information society, nor does it have a fixed, inevitable, evolutionary state. Instead, like every society in human history, it is up for grabs, and its final evolution will be the product of millions of choices about technological design, human preferences, and regulations of both technology and the ways that technology can (and cannot) be used. There is no final, inevitable “information society” we are being led toward by forces external to human beings and human institutions. We face the future, as we always have, facing choices.”
Things I liked: the concept that “privacy is dead” is a self-serving, fatalistic myth; the importance of privacy in intellectual activities; the repudiation of consumer privacy choices; and the idea that we conflate corporate and individual rights.
“There is nothing magical about our information society, nor does it have a fixed, inevitable, evolutionary state. Instead, like every society in human history, it is up for grabs, and its final evolution will be the product of millions of choices about technological design, human preferences, and regulations of both technology and the ways that technology can (and cannot) be used. There is no final, inevitable “information society” we are being led toward by forces external to human beings and human institutions. We face the future, as we always have, facing choices.”
June 16, 2024
"Why Privacy Matters" by Neil Richards delves into the significance of privacy in today's technology-driven society. Richards argues that privacy is crucial for maintaining individual autonomy, freedom of expression, and democracy. He explores the ways in which privacy is being threatened by pervasive surveillance, data collection, and the erosion of boundaries in the digital age. The author advocates for the protection of privacy rights through legal reforms and technological advancements in order to safeguard individual liberties and prevent potential abuses of power. Overall, the book serves as a compelling and insightful analysis of the importance of privacy in a world where personal information is constantly at risk of being exposed and exploited.
March 15, 2023
Interesting and highly accessible, this book simplifies a lot of important ideas.
Startlingly Amererican. He at one point suggests that the FBI doesn't use illegal surveillance except in the case of overzealous individuals at one point I believe, and also prone to misunderstanding or misrepresenting modern cultural issues like cancel culture and the millenial/boomer tension.
I would recommend this as a good introduction, because the American tendency towards aggressive and invasive surveillance affects all of us who are users of American tech (everybody on Amazon owned goodreads, for eg). It is a fairly neutral read compared to other books on this subject, with extremely mild views on companies/governments/actors against privacy, with very mild and uncontroversial political views (unless you're a Trump supporter I guess).
Startlingly Amererican. He at one point suggests that the FBI doesn't use illegal surveillance except in the case of overzealous individuals at one point I believe, and also prone to misunderstanding or misrepresenting modern cultural issues like cancel culture and the millenial/boomer tension.
I would recommend this as a good introduction, because the American tendency towards aggressive and invasive surveillance affects all of us who are users of American tech (everybody on Amazon owned goodreads, for eg). It is a fairly neutral read compared to other books on this subject, with extremely mild views on companies/governments/actors against privacy, with very mild and uncontroversial political views (unless you're a Trump supporter I guess).
August 6, 2024
Privacy is vital for any organization handling sensitive data, and businesses must stay current with the latest privacy regulations and strategies. This book provides practical advice and insights to help companies navigate the complex privacy and human information policy landscape. It highlights best practices for protecting customers' personal information and offers actionable advice to implement in any business.
September 24, 2024
We should all respect people's privacy. I appreciate my privacy.
January 2, 2025
Privacy, huh. Yeah!
What is it good for?
Absolutely everything, uhuh
Privacy, huh. Yeah!
What is it good for?
Absolutely everything, uhuh
Say it again!
What is it good for?
Absolutely everything, uhuh
Privacy, huh. Yeah!
What is it good for?
Absolutely everything, uhuh
Say it again!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews