Cato Institute Publishes Larry's New Book on Privacy in the Era of Big Data

Larry’s short book, “A Rational Response to the Privacy ‘Crisis,‘” is being published today by The Cato Institute.  It is available free as a PDF.

The book reviews the current dissonance in defining what consumer “privacy” means in the era of big data, and traces the historical roots of the debate in the United States as a conflict between Puritan “transparency” and frontier self-definition.

Rejecting calls to treat personal information as a kind of property–like the failing systems for copyright and patents–the book proposes instead to expand an implicit licensing regime that is already in place and working for nearly all consumers.