Privacy inquiry is both philosophical and scientific, and comes with the problems associated with each type of investigation. Using a formal model to measure privacy and create a scientific theory is based on Popper’s work on scientific contributions (Popper, 1967). Popper sets out structural requirements for scientific theories, such as I propose for privacy, including that a theory …
Otherwise known in PhD land as ‘Contributions’; a nice way of summarizing the things you learned a long the way that may or may not have anything to do with your actual dissertation topic. My research is a unique approach that applies concepts, tools and techniques to advance a theory of privacy and a formal …
What if a formal model isn’t possible? Privacy may be impossible to isolate from other human values and ideals such as trust, justice or spirituality. Attempting to model it allows for quick (and painless?) failure. A formal model does not allow for a detailed consideration of, for example, the given harms in an informational disclosure treating …
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 …
The topic of privacy appears in many traditional academic disciplines, and of late, in the world of pop culture. “That is a source of strength, for it raises the profile of privacy as a value, an interest and a right” (Raab, 2008). Exploring these intersects gives a hint at the range of both scholarly and non-scholarly work …
Like any other grad student with sketchy dial-up service in the late nineties, my hours of work were stored on a local hard drive. The day it crashed, my ensuing panic was entirely focused on getting my draft thesis back. I didn’t care about my journals, budget, contacts, or my (failing) diet plan. But that …
Privacy is a common yet personalized notion. While seemingly contrary, it speaks to the value of privacy in both individual and group settings. For the individual, privacy is a universal process. For the group, privacy is culturally specific and used to regulate social interaction (Altman, 1977). Consider, as Altman does, an office environment. In Western society, a closed office door …
This site began as a place to gather my observations about privacy, a riff on my dissertation with the intention of contributing more broadly. Over time, privacy experts have emerged from all disciplines with all types of background and training. These ‘Posts’ will be more academic in nature, while other sections of the site will …
Read more “This is about privacy, and privacy is about everything.”