The peep diaries

Hal Niedzviecki, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (2009)

This book is an extended essay on self-exposure online. It is filled with many interesting anecdotes. The book has a journalistic style and raises observations and questions more than it proposes solutions or policies. The “notes” at the end consist only of a brief bibliography for each chapter, and there are no indications of which…

Harboring Data

Andrea Matwyshyn (editor), Harboring Data: Information Security, Law, and the Corporation (2009)

Matwyshyn’s book focuses on data security, and it contains essays from a really top-notch group of experts. It explores data security breach notification laws, as well as the security of various kinds of data (trade secrets, patents, financial, health, children’s information). The book also nicely weaves together several disciplines — law, business, and technology.

Privacy in context

Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life (2009)

This book provides a refreshing, contemporary look at information privacy in the twenty-first century. Nissenbaum persuasively argues that privacy must be understood in its social context, and she provides an insightful and illuminating account of how to do so. For anyone considering the burgeoning problems of information privacy, Privacy in Context is essential reading.