This interesting and comprehensive book describes the legal and social implications of privacy in the US. The book discusses a number of privacy issues that have emerged in the post September 11, 2001 era. Solove, who is a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, brings a legal perspective to these issues. At times, some of the chapters in the book seem to briefly focus on specific legal cases related to these issues.

Solove presents an excellent summary of issues related to privacy and computer databases, public records, and government access. He pays particular attention to corporate databases, which seem to fall through the cracks of existing privacy laws. He notes that the problems related to privacy with regard to an individual and a large corporate database are reduced to the relationship an individual has with a bureaucracy,

...for unless these relationships are restructured, markets in information will not consist of fair, voluntary, and informed information transactions. Markets can certainly work to protect privacy, but a precondition of a successful market is establishing rules governing our relationships with bureaucracies.

Solove regards a “market-based solution” to corporate privacy issues to be an impossible approach to follow. Corporations that are in the consumer database business have no motivation to deal directly with consumers, and, although they rely on individual consumer information for their databases, contact with consumers becomes a costly affair that does little to ensure any type of profit in selling this information. Solove concludes by noting that the only workable solution for these problems is to develop a comprehensive set of laws that address privacy issues in an Internet-based, post September 11 era. He notes:

Our understandings of privacy must be significantly rethought. Once privacy is reconceptualized, we can find ways to accommodate both privacy and its opposing interests. With an understanding of privacy appropriate for the problems we now face, the law will be better able to build privacy into our burgeoning information society.