Privacy's Perfect Storm: Digital Policy for Post-Pandemic Times

The COVID-19 pandemic has expanded our online world at work and home to record levels. Our most personal and confidential data is being collected from multiple digital devices and stored, disseminated, and sold to government and commercial organizations, often without our knowledge, consent, or control. We are all now in Privacy’s Perfect Storm, which includes recent efforts by the European Union and the United States to set new legal boundaries.

Stuart N. Brotman offers a thoughtful guide to achieving better digital privacy protection in these turbulent times. He provides a consistently thoughtful, transparent, and inclusive approach to tech regulation, always considering what policies might best serve the public and our digital society.

Stuart Brotman brings a constructive new perspective to the digital privacy dialogue. Drawing on his extensive background as policy adviser, legal analyst, and business consultant, Stuart brings his unique brand of visionary thinking to bear, synthesizing a fresh multi-stakeholder approach to digital privacy policy. His insights on how the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to affect digital privacy in the post-pandemic world are especially prescient. Stuart moves far beyond conventional wisdom in this fascinating and thought-provoking collection of essays. A “must read” for anyone who cares about digital privacy in all its facets—and wants to be ready for what lies ahead.
Richard T. Kaplar
President and CEO
The Media Institute

The next big thing in technology won’t be another Internet-enabled device or service. It will be the long-delayed regulation of Internet society and its new challenges. Chief among these challenges is the privacy problem. Stuart Brotman’s collection of essays is both an essential guide to understanding the digital privacy policy landscape and a persuasive argument that the way forward demands a flexible multi-stakeholder approach, rather than a “silver bullet” law. A must-read for anyone who cares about how to solve the privacy puzzle—and who wants to be part of the solution.
Margery Kraus
Founder and Executive Chairman
APCO Worldwide

Stuart Brotman’s effort to provide a guide for navigating “Privacy’s Perfect Storm” succeeds magnificently. He takes a necessary, but too rare, holistic approach to digital privacy policy, akin to the holistic approach we attempted with the 2010 National Broadband Plan. Rather than accept conventional wisdom at face value, the book instead maps the complexity and nuance that the intersection of technology, economics, and competing international policies naturally entails. The recommendations also wisely extend beyond today’s moment, with Brotman’s background in government service enabling him to illuminate for readers the importance of political and public consensus to achieve meaningful outcomes over time.
Blair Levin
Executive Director
2010 United States National Broadband Plan

Brotman offers an incisive perspective on data privacy. He provides a consistently thoughtful approach to tech regulation, always considering what policies might best serve the public and our digital society. This is a timely and important book.
Professor Margaret Hu
Penn State Law and School of International Affairs

Stuart Brotman poses the difficult questions we all should be asking to clarify who is in charge, who will enforce digital privacy policy, and how will we ever feel truly safe in our post-COVID-19 digital world.
Sandra Baer
President and CEO
Personal Cities