The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance

Abstract

The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance Colin J. Bennett. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. 259 pp. $28.00The author is no stranger to monographs on the topic of privacy either as solo author or as a co-author (most recently, a review of his Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective [2003] [written with Charles D. Raab] appeared in the Spring, 2008 issue of the Journal of Information Ethics [pp. 86-87]). Bennett (and at times with co-authors) has made consistent contributions to the literature on privacy. The latest offering, however, differs from his previous efforts, or others for that matter, in that instead of exploring some aspect of privacy rights, protection, invasion, etc., this book focuses on the "individuals and groups that have emerged from civil society" as privacy advocates not "those within the state or the market" nor those members of civil society who have self-identified as such advocates (p. iv). True to his training in political science, Bennett is interested in not only the "who" but the "how": how do these advocates identify problems, strategize, and mobilize responses, etc.? The "data" is drawn from observation, a documentary review of various sources, and thirty key informant interviews (the list of those interviewed appears in several places) with actors from North America, Europe, and Australia.The presentation proceeds logically as if it were an extended journal article or dissertation but it was in fact funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The first chapter identifies the research problem while subsequent chapters discuss the advocacy groups and the contrasting following chapters cover the actors as individuals. The strategies both groups and actors have developed and case studies or "key conflicts" constitute the next two chapters; discussion of how these advocates have formed social networks and whether privacy might in the future become a social movement conclude the seven chapters of the book. A list of the deceptively simple interview questions is included in an appendix. As is typical of the author's work, a detailed bibliography of the relevant literature appears but it also includes, as would be expected given the task at hand, numerous references to popular and news sources that help identify the "key conflicts" and advocacy responses as reported in the mass media.The surveillance grid or typology offered in the first chapter is very useful as is the overview that accompanies it; it is concise, to-the-point, yet referential to selected prior work. Bennett recognizes that to some extent he is studying himself here since he admits that he is a privacy advocate, a "perennial" scholar. Bennett offers a taxonomy of actor categories: activists, researchers, consultants, technologists, journalists, and artists. The exposition offers a refreshing view of the all-too-familiar strands of privacy problems by providing perspectives drawn from the inventory of the advocates themselves. The discussion of privacy groups is organized into those dedicated to privacy or privacy-centric alone (e. …