By David Holtzman, ChangeThis.com, November 2006

Technology is endangering our privacy. Every company that we do business with holds a representation of ourselves somewhere in their data stores. Because laws make poor privacy guidelines, David Holtzman presents seven ethical ways for companies to handle our information.

There are two kinds of privacy: what you expect for yourself and what you’re willing to extend to others. An ethical approach to privacy attempts to converge the two.

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Download the Manifesto (Pdf, 1.42MB)

The Manifesto ChangeThis Official Website

David Holtzman Says:

Privacy is one of those simple sounding words that each of us thinks we can define, but couldn’t agree on if the correct answer would cure cancer. I wrote my book, Privacy Lost: How Technology is Endangering Your Privacy to show why it’s impossible for legislators to protect our privacy because information technology moves much faster than the legal system. This makes it tough for business executives who have to formulate privacy policies in a legal vacuum—what criteria do you use to decide how to handle confidential customer information, where a misstep could cause a public relations nightmare resulting in resignations (maybe yours) and a depressed stock price?

About the Author:

During the dot com boom of the late 1990s, David Holtzman ran one of the most critical networks in the world—the domain name system. As Chief Technology Officer of Network Solutions and the manager of the Internet's master root server, he oversaw the growth of the commercial Internet from five hundred thousand to over twenty million domain names. Mr. Holtzman has designed and built numerous information-based software systems and is the author of several major patents. He has consulted on marketing strategy for several large corporations, including Amazon.com. He has been a security consultant for several organizations, private and public, including Wesley Clark’s 2004 presidential campaign. He has been an advisor to over a dozen high-tech companies throughout North America.

In addition to being the author of the recently released Privacy Lost: How Technology is Endangering Your Privacy (Jossey-Bass, 2006) and consulting, Mr. Holtzman is currently the president of GlobalPOV, a firm he founded to explore significant technology issues and their effects on society. He has been interviewed by major news media including the New York Times, CNN, and USA Today. Holtzman wrote a monthly ethics and privacy column called "Flashpoint" for CSO [Chief Security Officer] Magazine, and his essays have been published in BusinessWeek, Wired Magazine, CNET, and ZDNet. Holtzman publishes daily on topics such as privacy, intellectual property, business, and pop culture on his blog, www.globalpov.com. Holtzman has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the father of five children, whom he raised as a single parent. He likes to sail, watch Shakespearean plays, and cook.

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