Some would argue that scarcely a day passes without a new assault on our privacy. In the wake of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of surveillance conducted by the security services in the United States, Britain and elsewhere, concerns about individual privacy have significantly increased. The Internet generates risks, unimagined even twenty years ago, to the security and integrity of information in all its forms.

The manner in which information is collected, stored, exchanged and used has changed forever, and with it, the character of the threats to individual privacy. The scale of accessible private data generated by the phenomenal growth of blogs, social media and other contrivances of our information age pose disturbing threats to our privacy. And the hunger for gossip continues to fuel sensationalist media that frequently degrade the notion of a private domain to which we reasonably lay claim.

In the new edition of this Very Short Introduction, Raymond Wacks looks at all aspects of privacy to include numerous recent changes and considers how this fundamental value might be reconciled with competing interests such as security and freedom of expression.

• Examines our need for privacy and why it is valued so highly, as well as what constitutes an invasion of privacy
• Considers the issues of privacy and security, privacy and the paparazzi and the protection of personal data
• Discusses the importance of privacy in debates about law and ethics
• Puts privacy in its wider social context by including examples of its sociological and psychological impact
• Raymond Wacks is an expert on the legal protection of privacy and how this protection varies in different countries
• Part of the bestselling Very Short Introductions series, over seven million copies sold worldwide