Privacy and Freedom Insights

The must-read analysis of the key insights from "Privacy and Freedom" by Alan Westin — presented by Athena.

Guarding our privacy in the face of “big data” may seem like a modern problem, but it’s one that scholars have been debating for decades. Alan Westin was a seminal voice in the privacy debate calling out the need for individual protections — and he was among the first to predict how emerging technology could fundamentally alter and invade our private worlds.

In defining privacy as “the claim of individuals…to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated,” Alan Westin’s 1967 classic *Privacy and Freedom* laid the philosophical groundwork for the current debates about technology and personal freedom, and is considered a foundational text in the field of privacy law.