As the world moves into the twenty-first century, cellular systems, high-density data storage, and the Internet are but a few of the new technologies that promise great advances in productivity and improvements in the quality of life. Yet these new technologies also threaten personal privacy. A surveillance society, in which the individual has little control over personal information, may be the logical result of deregulation, globalization, and a mass data-processing capacity. Consumers report increasing concern over erosion of personal privacy even as they volunteer personal information in exchange for coupons, catalogues, and credit. What kind of privacy future are we facing? In Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age, some of the most prominent international theorists and practitioners in the field explore the impact of evolving technology on private citizens. The authors critically probe market, ethical, global, regulatory and advocacy issues, as each answers the question, 'How can we develop privacy solutions equal to the surveillance challenges of the future?'

Colin Bennett is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. His research has focused on the comparative analysis of surveillance technologies and privacy protection policies at the domestic and international levels. In addition to numerous scholarly and newspaper articles, he has published six books, including The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance (MIT Press, 2008), as well as policy reports on privacy protection for Canadian and international agencies. He is currently a coinvestigator with the The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting.

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