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:
Watch Daniel Solove’s discussion with Stephen Bolinger, the creator of the documentary “Privacy People” about the role of privacy professionals and their importance.
I enjoy collecting things related to privacy as well as seeing how privacy is described and depicted throughout different times in history.
I collected about 50 magazine covers involving privacy from 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 also have a collection of magazine covers involving AI, computers, and the internet that I’ll be sharing later.
I’ll begin with a quick look, then I’ll include larger images later.
The TV series Andor (2022-2025) is one of the very best depictions of the dimensions of an authoritarian regime and those who resist it. The series is one of my all-time favorites—it is phenomenal in everything, from writing to acting to cinematography.
Andor chronicles the beginnings of the rebellion against the Empire prior to the movie Star Wars Episode IV (1977). It is a prequel to the prequel movie, Rogue I: A Star Wars Story (2016).
“Privacy is dead!” I’ve heard this proclamation countless times. But privacy has been dying for decades . . . and it keeps on dying.
Below is my collection of eulogies for privacy, which shows that we should be skeptical of claims that privacy is dead. If we believe this, then we might give up the fight for privacy, which will let those who want to kill privacy get away with murder.
It’s a perennial debate: Who was more prophetic, George Orwell or Aldous Huxley? I find discussions about this debate to be quite interesting. Read on to find out different perspectives on the issue, including comments by Orwell and Huxley on each others’ works, and my own take.
Orwell and Huxley wrote two of the most influential dystopian novels of all time. Both dystopias involve total control, but they achieve control in different ways. Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949) features an oppressive drab world ruled by an authoritarian government called Big Brother. There is pervasive surveillance, and the government wants to control not just what people say but what they believe. Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) depicts a world where people are controlled by drugs and pleasure. Although everyone is happy, everyone is manipulated and controlled and lives a shallow mindless existence.
I’m pleased to debut a new cartoon, The Privacy Compliance Easy Button. This cartoon captures the value and power of data minimization.
Data minimization should be a principle that is applied throughout the entire life cycle of personal information, and data shouldn’t be retained when there is no longer a purpose for keeping it.
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Professor Daniel J. Solove is a law professor at George Washington University Law School. Through his company, TeachPrivacy, he has created the largest library of computer-based privacy and data security training, with more than 180 courses.
Design is key to privacy. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates data protection by design and default. Other laws are starting to require privacy or data protection by design.
Why is design so important to privacy? As I wrote in On Privacy and Technology (2025), the “design of software, websites, and electronic devices controls what people can and can’t do, how people behave, how people interact with others, the way people make decisions, how much personal data they disclose, and many other things.”
Over the years, many books and writings have been published that provide useful advice and perspectives on privacy by design. Here are a few great books and writings that every privacy and data protection officer should read, as well as any policymakers who are crafting or enforcing privacy laws.