Launch of Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age

Hon Michael Chertoff, Former US Secretary of Homeland Security in conversation with Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, former UK Home Secretary, discussing his new book Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age.

In Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age, former US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff describes the creaky and dated legal framework that currently governs the collection and use of personal data. Noting that this framework was created decades ago when phone records and photographs constituted metadata, Chertoff argues that we need a legal and policy structure built for the way the 21st century uses data—one that retains security and economic benefits without sacrificing liberty and civic values. Privacy, he argues, has been forever lost, and the collection of data will—and must, for security reasons—expand. What must be preserved, however, by new laws and regulations is our autonomy—the ability to make our own personal choices restricted only by transparent laws and social norms, and to have a reasonable degree of ownership and control over the data we generate.