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Prof. Danielle Citron on Privacy, Surveillance, and Love in the Digital Age
UVA Law Professor and MacArthur Fellow Danielle Citron, an international expert on online privacy and abuse, will speak about the latest developments at the intersection of technology, public policy, and our daily Internet-driven lives at 6:45pm Tuesday October 11th at the Downtown Library’s Swanson Case Room and also on Zoom; please mark your calendars to join us! Prof. Citron will be “in conversation” with UVA History Prof. William Hitchcock, co-host of the Democracy in Danger podcast. Q&A will follow.
Copies of her new book The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (coming out the week before she speaks!) will be available for purchase. From her publisher’s website:
“The essential road map for understanding—and defending—your right to privacy in the twenty-first century.
Privacy is disappearing. From our sex lives to our workout routines, the details of our lives once relegated to pen and paper have joined the slipstream of new technology. As a MacArthur fellow and distinguished professor of law at the University of Virginia, acclaimed civil rights advocate Danielle Citron has spent decades working with lawmakers and stakeholders across the globe to protect what she calls intimate privacy—encompassing our bodies, health, gender, and relationships. When intimate privacy becomes data, corporations know exactly when to flash that ad for a new drug or pregnancy test. Social and political forces know how to manipulate what you think and who you trust, leveraging sensitive secrets and deepfake videos to ruin or silence opponents. And as new technologies invite new violations, people have power over one another like never before, from revenge porn to blackmail, attaching life-altering risks to growing up, dating online, or falling in love.
A masterful new look at privacy in the twenty-first century, The Fight for Privacy takes the focus off Silicon Valley moguls to investigate the price we pay as technology migrates deeper into every aspect of our lives: entering our bedrooms and our bathrooms and our midnight texts; our relationships with friends, family, lovers, and kids; and even our relationship with ourselves.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with victims, activists, and advocates, Citron brings this headline issue home for readers by weaving together visceral stories about the countless ways that corporate and individual violators exploit privacy loopholes. Exploring why the law has struggled to keep up, she reveals how our current system leaves victims—particularly women, LGBTQ+ people, and marginalized groups—shamed and powerless while perpetrators profit, warping cultural norms around the world…”
Prof. William Hitchcock’s work and teaching focus on the global history of the 20th Century, in particular the era of the two world wars and the cold war. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1994, working under the supervision of Paul Kennedy, and taught at Yale for six years (and served as the Associate Director of International Security Studies). He is now writing “FDR and the Dictators: Fascism, Democracy and the Awakening of America,” which explores reactions in the United States to the rise of fascism in Europe from the 1920s to 1941.
