#36 Daniel J. Solove: Privacy, Power, and the Failure of the Law

What if the biggest threat to privacy isn’t technology itself—but the laws that let powerful institutions use it without meaningful accountability?

In this episode of the AITEC Philosophy Podcast, Roberto speaks with privacy scholar Daniel J. Solove about his book On Privacy and Technology. They explore why privacy is a social good rather than merely an individual preference, why the familiar “notice and consent” model places an impossible burden on ordinary people, and how AI makes modern data collection even harder to understand or control. The conversation also turns to algorithmic prediction, Wisconsin v. Loomis, the illusion of meaningful human oversight, and the ways biased data can shape decisions about sentencing, hiring, lending, and other consequential areas of life.

Solove argues that technology itself is not the enemy. The deeper problem is a legal system that often fails to hold companies accountable for the risks they create. The solution, he suggests, is to change the incentives: make organizations bear more of the risk, require greater care before technologies are deployed, and impose meaningful consequences when things go wrong.

Link to Daniel Solove's Substack: https://danielsolove.substack.com/

Link to Daniel Solove's Website: https://www.danielsolove.com/