Summary

Digital technology has caused governments, businesses, and individuals to rethink long-held notions of privacy and security. Extensive government databases and the increased use of the Internet for text, audio, and video communication make it possible to monitor every Web site a computer user visits and every conversation that they have. Although such monitoring can be used to perform surveillance on actual or suspected criminals, it can also be used to spy on innocent individuals if sufficient technology and legal constraints are not in place. Privacy, Security, and Cyberspace illustrates how digital privacy and security is often a cat-and-mouse game in which owners of computers and digital data constantly update their defenses in response to new threats, while black hat hackers (those who break into computer systems with malicious intent) develop new ways to break through such defenses. 

Chapters include:

• Your Right to Privacy
• Computer Viruses: Invisible Threats to Privacy
• Spyware: Software Snooping on Your Private Data
• Phishing and Social Engineering: Confidence Games Go Online
• Your Personal Information Online: Everyone Is a Public Figure Now
• Identity Theft: Protecting Oneself Against Imposters
• Keeping Your Data Secure: the Best Offense Is a Good Defense
• Databases, Privacy, and Security: Monitoring the "Online You."

Specifications

Full-color photographs and line illustrations. Index. Glossary. Chronology. Further resources.

About the Author(s)

Robert Plotkin is a patent attorney specializing in patent protection for computer technology. His firm, Robert Plotkin, P.C., has been named a "Go-To Law Firm for Leading Technology Companies" by American Lawyer Media. He is the author of The Genie in the Machine: How Computer-Automated Inventing Is Revolutionizing Law and Business, which explores the impact of invention automation technology on high-tech companies and patent law. Plotkin received his undergraduate degree in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his law degree from the Boston University School of Law and currently teaches a course entitled Software and the Law.