The InfoSoc Working Group hosts the presentation of the book "Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power" by Professor Ari Ezra Waldman, Northeastern University, Boston.
Abstract:
In Industry Unbound, Professor Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine our privacy. With research based on interviews with scores of tech employees and internal documents outlining corporate strategies, Waldman reveals that companies don't just lobby against privacy law; they also manipulate how we think about privacy, how their employees approach their work, and how they weaken the law to make data-extractive products the norm. In contrast to those who claim that privacy law is getting stronger, Professor Waldman shows why recent shifts in privacy law are precisely the kinds of changes that corporations want and how even those who think of themselves as privacy advocates often unwittingly facilitate corporate malfeasance. This powerful account should be ready by anyone who wants to understand why privacy laws are not working and how corporations trap us into giving up our personal information.
Speaker bio:
Professor Ari Ezra Waldman, a leading authority on law, technology and society, is a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. He directs the School of Law's Center for Law, Information and Creativity (CLIC). Professor Waldman studies how law and technology effect marginalised populations, with particular focus on privacy, misinformation and the LGBT community.
Professor Waldman is a widely published scholar, including two books, Privacy As Trust: Information Privacy for an Information Age (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and more than 30 articles published in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. He has also written for the popular press and serves on the editorial board of Law & Social Inquiry (LSI), a peer-reviewed journal that publishes work on socio-legal issues across multiple disciplines, including anthropology, criminology, economics, history, law, philosophy, political science, sociology and social psychology.
Participants are welcome to ask questions and take part in the discussion.
The InfoSoc Working Group is a forum where EUI members and external researchers working on research topics regarding social sciences and the information society present their own projects and interact with other scholars. All interested fellows, PhD researchers, professors and visiting academics are invited to participate.