People collected personal information before information technology; on paper, the most sensitive of which might be stored in a vault somewhere.
Now, much of this personal information is in digital form stored on computers that are more likely than not connected to millions of other computers. Even some machine generated data contains information is used for things we did not imagine when these computing devices were built, including evidence in a court of law where non-repudiation and integrity are assumed (tautologically, because it is machine generated).
Computing is about connectivity and trust, and no matter what side of the privacy debate one takes, progress can and should be made.
Legislation forces us to make largely independent decisions on privacy as personal information moves through systems. It also attempts to confine these decisions to different definitions of privacy, depending on the law. These systems must account for this legal right and psychological need for people to make defensible decisions on their own privacy in the real world.
Yet, guidance from privacy literature is difficult to obtain because there is no unified mechanism for representation.
Selected research in law, sociology, psychology, economics, computer science and information studies have examined meaning, concepts, associated terminology, and balancing risk. Each discipline approaches the issue with its own language, models and assumptions.
What if there was a formal model that could integrate relevant interdisciplinary inputs based on the notion of privacy interest, and affirms that computer science can solve the privacy problem of representation?
In so doing, it could apply both the disclosure of personal information in the physical world (paper, for example, handing your driver’s licence to a police officer) and electronically (mostly online, for example, signing in to your email account using a password).
A formal model could standardize the language, model and assumptions behind research to drive, enforce and enhance privacy in computer systems.
A formal model could assist in making explicit some of the requirements for making decisions on information disclosure that computing has eliminated.
It may answer the question: what is privacy?