People Don’t Get It

And companies don’t help them, because it’s not in their best interests. On the other end of the transaction, data subjects also have to navigate a complex set of requirements that change from service to service; for example, what is private by default on Facebook may not be on WhatsApp.   Each application and service comes …

Organizations Don’t Get It

Confusion over patchwork legislation and terminology can lead to inactivity in operationalization of privacy as a result of the inability to assign roles and responsibilities.   If a Chief Privacy Officer is not required by legislation, who is responsible for organizational privacy programs, practices and outcomes?  Ultimately, each organization decides how best to manage programs and when, …

Let’s NOT Make More Laws, Please.

Lots of countries have multiple privacy acts, typically sector or issue specific.  Some define ‘privacy’ or refer to informational privacy.  Some use audit for enforcement, others are complaint based.  Fines may apply to violations in some legislation, others allow for civil or even criminal penalties.  Even within a given country, different rules may apply.  Graham Greenleaf does an excellent …

The Privacy ‘Police’

Countries with privacy legislation use a variety of enforcement mechanisms that are constantly evolving.  For some, a Privacy Regulator is appointed.  For others, there are civil and / or criminal penalties (Baker & McKenzie & International Association of Privacy Professionals, 2012).  For example, in Canada the Office of the Privacy Commissioner / Ontario was enacted under the provincial privacy …

Privacy IS Important

The world heard from years from a variety of (mostly) Silicon Valley tech executives that privacy was ‘dead’, didn’t matter, or that ‘really people don’t care’. Setting aside the fact that people who yell the loudest about privacy ‘being dead’ are the same who profit from the death by the billions, privacy does in fact …

So, What’s the Real Problem?

Privacy is difficult because it is legislated.   Legislation is open to interpretation, differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and people have different understandings of concepts such as consent.  This is further complicated by the evolution of networked communications, or ubiquitous computing (or AI). Nonetheless, computational technologies are a valid means of addressing the issues involved by positing …

Concerns about Definitions

I have discussed and consumed endless definitions for privacy, and conclude with the notion of control over information disclosure as the central concept.   Some scholars disagree.   For feminist scholars, the very existence of privacy is a cover for gender inequality (Fox-Genovese, 1992; MacKinnon, 1989).  Some scholars prefer the group notion of privacy, versus the individual rights notion (Altman, …

Concerns with the Method

The very subjectivity of privacy is one of the reasons that previous studies have withered.  Attempting to base research on one or more definitions of privacy is indeed limited.   Think of privacy.   How would you visualize it?   How would you seek to explain your expectations and guidelines for information disclosure?   When asked individually it is difficult …

The Trickiness of Values

I chose to represent privacy as a continuous variable over a specific range.   While my diagrams (last post) presents the overall schema, my model stays within an even narrower range here, [+1,+9] by focusing on the positive valuation of privacy as a human value.  In a formal model it is demonstrable that small differences yield significant outcomes …

Social Thresholds for Privacy

Privacy research across disciplines touches on some similar themes, spheres of activity, control and individual versus the group.  Inherent in these themes is the notion of values, and the determination that one ‘has privacy’ or ‘does not have privacy’.  This threshold is contextually dependent (consistent with Nissenbaum’s theory) on the amount of overall privacy available (Nissenbaum, 2009).  Adapting Marsh’s …