Daniel J Solove, UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (www.hup.harvard.edu), 2008 (hb), 2010 (pb). ix + 257 pp. ISBN 9780674027725 (hb). £33.95. ISBN 9780674035072 (pb). £14.95.
| Author | Martin J Doris |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2010.0323 |
| Pages | 543-545 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
If we are to believe the popular press, privacy is under attack, fast becoming a relic of a distant, more civic past – an era when the “sanctity” of the mail, or indeed the telegram, was respected, the family home was inviolable and, in the mind of US Justice Joseph Story at least, the notion of interference with another's private affairs was almost too odious a thought to contemplate. By contrast, today it would appear that each month brings a new media warning concerning CCTV, or the breaking news of a major corporate data breach or some spectacular loss of confidential information. Even minor changes to privacy policies on social networking sites, or the latest celebrity scoop, are presented as firm evidence of a steady erosion of the private space and the cherished right “to be let alone”. These incidents and threats, be they real or imagined, often prompt calls for new legislation or stiffer sanctions aimed at safeguarding our privacy. Yet what is it that the law should seek to protect, what sanctions should society impose in the event of a privacy invasion and, perhaps more importantly, is it really our laws, or rather our new “neutral” technologies, that will provide us with the surest protections going forward?
The boundaries of privacy and why modern laws should be used to protect it are questions still relatively under-examined within domestic legal systems and above all in wider law and policy debates. Indeed, a brief glance at the most popular law reviews and dominant university syllabuses reveals the relatively low level of interest in privacy studies. This may be changing, albeit slowly, but
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