I’ve curated a list of recent works on privacy, AI, and tech that will be worth your time checking out. Authors included:
Published posthumously, Italo Calvino’s Numbers in the Dark (2002) is a provocative collection of stories written between 1943 and 1984 that explores the effects of digital technologies and data.
Yesterday, I edited Chatrie v. United States (2026) for my casebook, INFORMATION PRIVACY LAW, which Paul Schwartz and I are in the process of updating right now. The U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in geolocation data obtained via a geofencing warrant (which compels a company to turn over data about cell phones located in a particular area). This means that the Fourth Amendment applies, which is the first step for Fourth Amendment protection.
Chatrie was decided this week, so the ink is still wet, but here are some early thoughts on the case, plus my edited version. The opinion with concurrences and dissents clocks in at more than 70 pages, but I cut it down to the essentials. First, my thoughts, then the edited case.
Here’s a new cartoon about the AI hype these days. It seems that everything involving data or an algorithm is being rebranded as AI.
A while ago, I wrote about how AI is, in fact, a rebrand—one I analogized to the way fish were rebranded.
I recently finished watching the first season of a terrific new TV series, The Audacity (2026). The show chronicles Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), an out-of-control tech billionaire who has a company called Hypergnosis. The show was created by Jonathan Glatzer, who was a writer and producer for several TV series including Succession, Better Call Saul, and Bloodline.
I created this cartoon about the profound ugliness of the AI race. Tech leaders are rushing to create AI and are unleashing it upon the world far too quickly with far too few guardrails and far too little responsibility.
I previously posted my collection of privacy magazine covers. Here’s my collection of magazine covers involving AI, the internet, and related digital technologies.
I collected more than 80 magazine covers from the 1950s to the present. I’m excited to share my collection with you. If you have any covers I’ve missed, please share them with me.
I’ll begin with a quick look, then I’ll include larger images later.
Also scroll down to the very end to see my favorite covers, including my top 3 and see if you agree with me.
I’ve curated a list of recent works on privacy, AI, and tech that will be worth your time checking out. As I’m just launching this series, I have a backlog of recent works that I plan to include in future editions.
Is personal data property? Should it be?
I’ve often heard arguments that an effective way to protect privacy would be to protect personal data with property rights. The thinking behind this idea is that ownership of property confers a lot of power on the owner, so perhaps this is the best way to empower individuals to control their data.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. I wrote about this problem more than twenty years ago in my book, THE DIGITAL PERSON: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE (2004) (see here for a free PDF of the entire book).
I began my discussion by explaining the theory animating the proponents of privacy-as-property: