Online surveillance of our behavior by private companies is on the increase, particularly through the Internet of Things and the increasing use of algorithmic decision-making. This troubling trend undermines privacy and increasingly threatens our ability to control how information about us is shared and used. Written by a computer scientist and a legal scholar, The Privacy Fix proposes a set of evidence-based, practical solutions that will help solve this problem. Requiring no technical or legal expertise, the book explains complicated concepts in clear, straightforward language. Bridging the gap between computer scientists, economists, lawyers, and public policy makers, this book provides theoretically and practically sound public policy guidance about how to preserve privacy in the onslaught of surveillance. It emphasizes the need to make tradeoffs among the complex concerns that arise, and it outlines a practical norm-creation process to do so.

Evidence-based solutions and practical steps to preserve privacy online.

Privacy is one of the most urgent issues associated with information technology and digital media. This book claims that what people really care about when they complain and protest that privacy has been violated is not the act of sharing information itself—most people understand that this is crucial to social life —but the inappropriate, improper sharing of information. Arguing that privacy concerns should not be limited solely to concern about control over personal information, Helen Nissenbaum counters that information ought to be distributed and protected according to norms governing distinct social contexts—whether it be workplace, health care, schools, or among family and friends. She warns that basic distinctions between public and private, informing many current privacy policies, in fact obscure more than they clarify. In truth, contemporary information systems should alarm us only when they function without regard for social norms and values, and thereby weaken the fabric of social life.

Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. His 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur was critical in helping advance the conversation around the Internet, which has now morphed from a tool providing efficiencies and opportunities for consumers and business to a force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world. In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Keen focuses on what we can do about this seemingly intractable situation. Looking to the past to learn how we might change our future, he describes how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which, like its digital counterpart, demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments and altered the business world beyond recognition. Travelling across the globe, from India to Estonia, Germany to Singapore, he investigates the best (and worst) practices in five key areas - regulation, innovation, social responsibility, consumer choice and education - and concludes by examining whether we are seeing the beginning of the end of the America-centric digital world. Powerful, urgent and deeply engaging, How to Fix the Future vividly depicts what we must do if we are to try to preserve human values in an increasingly digital world and what steps we might take as societies and individuals to make the future something we can again look forward to.

The Right to Repair reveals how companies stop us from fixing our devices and explains how we can fight back.

Recent decades have produced a wide variety of technical tools for privacy protection. However, the hopes placed in these tools are often inflated. Overestimating the protective effect of privacy-enhancing technologies can be dangerous and may lead to a false sense of security. This chapter stresses that the following aspects need to be born in mind when assessing the real impact of technical privacy safeguards: (1) Data controllers' reluctance to apply self-limiting privacy safeguards, (2) the loophole created by the notice-and-choice approach to privacy protection, (4) technical challenges and limitations, (4) the limited scope of protection that privacy-enhancing technologies can offer. Also, many problems associated with the processing of personal data are not primarily of technical nature but involve fundamental social, ethical, and political questions. There is no doubt that technical tools play a crucial part in protecting people's privacy today. They are necessary but not sufficient. To meaningfully protect people against the dangers resulting from modern data processing, strong regulation is needed as well.

In the vein of #Girlboss and Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, discover how to thrive at work from the head of the Global Innovation Coalition for Change at UN Women with this “passionate, practical roadmap for addressing inequality and finally making our workplaces work for women” (Arianna Huffington). For years, we’ve been telling women that in order to succeed at work, they have to change themselves first—lean in, negotiate like a man, don’t act too nice or you’ll never get the corner office. But after sixteen years working with major Fortune 500 companies as a gender equality expert, Michelle King has realized one simple truth—the tired advice of fixing women doesn’t fix anything. The truth is that workplaces are gendered; they were designed by men for men. Because of this, most organizations unconsciously carry the idea of an “ideal worker,” typically a straight, white man who doesn’t have to juggle work and family commitments. Based on King’s research and exclusive interviews with major companies and thought leaders, The Fix reveals why denying the fact that women are held back just because they are women—what she calls gender denial—is the biggest obstacle holding women back at work and outlines the hidden sexism and invisible barriers women encounter at work every day. Women who speak up are seen as pushy. Women who ask for a raise are seen as difficult. Women who spend hours networking don’t get the same career benefits as men do. Because women don’t look like the ideal worker and can’t behave like the ideal worker, they are passed over for promotions, paid less, and pushed out of the workforce, not because they aren’t good enough, but because they aren’t men. In this fascinating and empowering book, King outlines the invisible barriers that hold women back at all stages of their careers, and provides readers with a clear set of takeaways to thrive despite the sexist workplace, as they fight for change from within. Gender equality is not about women, and it is not about men—it is about making workplaces work for everyone. Together, we can fix work, not women.