Privacy in Crisis

Should we give up privacy to fight disease, for national security, or to help train AI systems?

Recent crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Gaza and Afghanistan to the seemingly unstoppable rise of AI, have put privacy under severe pressure. Privacy in Crisis argues the opposite: these crises show that privacy needs to be protected even more.

Privacy in Crisis looks at vital current issues: at political manipulation and misinformation, government surveillance, racial tension, hybrid and cyberwarfare (and real wars, such as those in Ukraine and Gaza), the overwhelming power of the internet giants, and surveillance society, and how interference with privacy is key in all of them. It shows how specific crises bring many of these issues together in perfect storms of privacy invasion.

The different threats to our privacy revealed by these crises tell parallel stories and are inextricably linked. There are common themes and common technologies – the threats involve the same data, the same profiling systems and the same approaches. In many cases the systems are run or owned by the same small set of companies, controlled by the same few people. Addressing them is difficult but possible – this essential book outlines how.