About the Primer

Companies of all sizes face difficult decisions about privacy and free speech and advances in AI and the current political climate has made many of these issues even more complex. Using this guide and its 150+ real life case studies can help you navigate this thorny terrain and make smart proactive decisions to avoid expensive problems, protect people, and grow your business for the long-term. Building the right protections into products and services isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s good for business, too.

Since publishing the first edition of Privacy & Free Speech: It’s Good for Business in 2009, this business primer has grown into the largest historical repository of illustrative examples – 150+ real-life case studies - for companies, policymakers, and the public to really understand why building in the right protections from the start really matters. 

It’s no surprise that privacy and free speech issues are now center stage for many people, policymakers, and investors. We are in a critical moment – a confluence of rapid growth of AI, concern about surveillance business models, further growth of cybersecurity threats, government surveillance, and censorship – and how it all affects the rights and health of people of all ages and democracy itself.  

The failure to take privacy and free speech into proper account leads to public relations nightmares, costly lawsuits, government investigations, the loss of customers and business partners, and can put people at real risk. Meanwhile, companies taking proactive steps to design user-protective products and business plans have not only avoided these harms but also benefited from positive press and increased customer trust.

Whether your company is a startup or an industry giant, you can protect people and your bottom line by building the right privacy and free speech protections into your products and services. Privacy & Free Speech: It’s Good for Business gets you started. It walks you through the basic questions you need to address in order to integrate proper privacy and free speech protections into your design process. It also provides recommendations and hundreds of real-life case studies to help you get started.  

Companies of all sizes face difficult decisions about privacy and free speech. Using this guide and sharing it with your colleagues will help you navigate this thorny terrain. Building robust protections into your products and services isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s good for your business, too.

This publication is supported by the generosity of the ACLU’s members and donors.