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  • Published: 5 October 2022
  • ISBN: 9781784745127
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.99

The Fight for Privacy

Protecting Dignity, Identity and Love in the Digital Age




An urgent exposé into how our modern digital lives place our privacy under threat - giving us a new understanding of how we can (and why we should) fight for it

'Devastating and urgent, this book could not be more timely' Caroline Criado Perez, award-winning and bestselling author of Invisible Women

Danielle Citron takes the conversation about technology and privacy out of the boardrooms and op-eds to reach readers where we are - in our bathrooms and bedrooms; with our families and our lovers; in all the parts of our lives we assume are untouchable - and shows us that privacy, as we think we know it, is largely already gone.

The boundary that once protected our intimate lives from outside interests is an artefact of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first, we have embraced a vast array of technology that enables constant access and surveillance of the most private aspects of our lives. From non-consensual pornography, to online extortion, to the sale of our data for profit, we are vulnerable to abuse -- and our laws have failed miserably to keep up.

With vivid examples drawn from interviews with victims, activists and lawmakers from around the world, The Fight for Privacy reveals the threat we face and argues urgently and forcefully for a reassessment of privacy as a human right. As a legal scholar and expert, Danielle Citron is the perfect person to show us the way to a happier, better protected future.

  • Published: 5 October 2022
  • ISBN: 9781784745127
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.99

Praise for The Fight for Privacy

Professor Citron - the brilliant, ground-breaking law professor and civil rights advocate - continues her important and impactful work in helping governments, society, and the titans of the technology sector to understand that our collective failure to protect our intimate privacy amounts to a massive failing to protect our basic civil rights. Through heart-breaking accounts form victims, a careful and detailed exposition of how a range of technologies are being weaponized against us, and a detailed review of the ethical and legal landscape governing these issues, The Fight for Privacy is a must read by anyone who cares about civil rights

Hany Farid, UC Berkeley

This is a terrific, though terrifying, exposé about how often our intimate activities and intimate information about us end up on social media. Professor Danielle Citron makes a compelling case for a 'right to intimate privacy' under the law. This beautifully written book deserves a wide audience and hopefully will inspire needed meaningful change in the law

Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

When your wristwatch monitors your location and your health status and your window-shopping and purchases generate information sold and combined with other information about you, the accumulation of 'little assents' produce constant surveillance, risks of manipulation, and the elimination of privacy. Danielle Citron's expert and engaging treatment of 'technology-enabled privacy violations' shows why victims, digital platforms, and legislators alike turn to her for advice and for fights to reclaim privacy morally, legally, and practically

Martha Minow, former Dean, Harvard Law School

Danielle Keats Citron has given us a crucial book for understanding the crisis of privacy invasion, and the unrelenting damage that comes from intimate, nonconsensual surveillance. This book should be required reading for every policy maker, parent, or person who wants to reimagine privacy protections. If you care about anyone, anywhere, you should read this book

Safiya Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression

It's so refreshing to read an argument for privacy that centres women - Citron presents a crucial analysis that has been sorely missing from this important debate until now. Devastating and urgent, this book could not be more timely

Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women

The Fight for Privacy is nothing less than the battle to keep our intimate, private selves free from exploitation. A vitally important book

Cordelia Fine, author of A Mind Of Its Own

Privacy is politics, and if we want it back we must fight for it. In this open-hearted and down-to-earth book Danielle Citron offers reasons for optimism among the ruins of our once cherished privacy. She details the devastating effects of the loss of 'intimate privacy' and argues that new rights and laws for the digital age are both long overdue and within our grasp. Lawmakers and citizens alike, this book is for you

Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Danielle Citron's book makes privacy undeniably and uncomfortably personal, shining a light on the ways technology is used to pry open the most intimate corners of our lives. Hers is a powerful and urgent manifesto for the protection of "intimate privacy" in the United States and beyond

Susie Alegre, author of Freedom to Think, international human rights lawyer

The Fight for Privacy is a tour de force. Arguing convincingly that our intimate privacy is a moral necessity being eroded in frightening and accelerating ways, Citron offers trenchant clarity and lucid hope for achieving justice in our digital future. A must read

Kate Manne, author of Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women