The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age by Daniel Solove

From the Publisher

Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, electronic databases are compiling information about you. As you surf the Internet, an unprecedented amount of your personal information is being recorded and preserved forever in the digital minds of computers. For each individual, these databases create a profile of activities, interests, and preferences used to investigate backgrounds, check credit, market products, and make a wide variety of decisions affecting our lives. The creation and use of these databases—which Daniel J. Solove calls “digital dossiers”—has thus far gone largely unchecked.  In this startling account of new technologies for gathering and using personal data, Solove explains why digital dossiers pose a grave threat to our privacy.

Digital dossiers impact many aspects of our lives. For example, they increase our vulnerability to identity theft, a serious crime that has been escalating at an alarming rate. Moreover, since September 11^th, the government has been tapping into vast stores of information collected by businesses and using it to profile people for criminal or terrorist activity. 

THE DIGITAL PERSON not only explores these problems, but provides a compelling account of how we can respond to them.  Using a wide variety of sources, including history, philosophy, and literature, Solove sets forth a new understanding of what privacy is, one that is appropriate for the new challenges of the Information Age. Solove recommends how the law can be reformed to simultaneously protect our privacy and allow us to enjoy the benefits of our increasingly digital world.

Daniel J. Solove is associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School.  He is the author (with Marc Rotenberg) of INFORMATION PRIVACY LAW. 

What People Are Saying

Paul Schwartz
A must-read. The Digital Person is a far-reaching examination of how 'digital dossiers' are shaping our lives. Solove has persuasively reconceptualized privacy for the digital age.
—Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Pamela Samuelson
Solove's book is the best exposition thus far about the threat that computer databases containing personal data about millions of Americans poses for information privacy. Solove documents not only how ongoing advances in information technology is increasing this threat significantly, but also how governmental uses of private sector databases and private sector uses of governmental databases are further eroding the privacy-by-obscurity protection of yesteryear. Most importantly, Solove offers a conception of privacy that, if adopted, provides guidance about policies that would preserve information privacy as a social value.
—Chancellor's Professor of Law and Information Management at the University of California, Berkeley

Jeffrey Rosen
Daniel Solove is one of the most energetic and creative scholars writing about privacy today. The Digital Person is an important contribution to the privacy debate, and Solove's discussion of the harms of what he calls 'digital dossiers' is invaluable.
—author of The Unwanted Gaze and The Naked Crowd

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents