Open Book: The Failed Promise of Information Privacy in America

With financial and other personal information about us in countless databases, there is a pervasive concern in many countries that we have little control over access to potentially harmful uses of that information and that little can be done to address the problem except to give out as little information as possible and try our best to monitor our credit reports and financial accounts in an effort to detect unexpected activity if it occurs. By not enacting strong information privacy laws in the non-governmental sector, the U.S. Congress and the fifty states have effectively defaulted to a market-based model of privacy protection that relies heavily on individual self-policing and market incentives as the primary means of information control. A self-policing privacy protection model could be effective if a market for information privacy were possible-if well informed individuals could shop their privacy preferences effectively. This book examines the reasons why this is highly unlikely and why privacy laws in the United States (or the lack thereof) will not protect legitimate consumer interests in the years to come.