[PEC] Privacy and Computing Technologies

Privacy and Computing Technologies

Content

  • Perspectives on Privacy
    • To describe the multi-dimensional nature of privacy
    • To identify threats and principles related to privacy
    • To reflect on trade-offs in privacy and the right to privacy conception
  • Theories of Privacy
    • To describe different definitions, views and opinions about privacy
    • To explain Solove’s taxonomy of privacy problems
    • To explain the effect of legal and cultural settings on privacy
    • To explain panopticism main ideas

What’s privacy?

Access vs. Disclosure

Access means physical proximity to a person or a knowledge about the person.
In a society there is a tension between the desires, rights and responsibilities of a person who wants to restrict access to himself/herself and the desires, rights and responsibilities for outsiders to gain access

Is there a natural ‘right’ to privacy?

Privacy rights evolved from property rights. Most societies agree that individual have natural rights, such as the right to life, liberty and own property.

Right to be free from intrusion. No adequate legal remedies(解决方案) for intrusion. Laws against libel and slander(中伤诽谤) are not sufficient when private and true information is revealed without a person’s consent.

Every privacy right violation is a violation of another right. “leaving a person alone” is a narrow definition of privacy. Surveillance practices leave a person alone but collect information without consent. Violating privacy involves violating property right, or physical self right, or similar. Implication: privacy right is not natural right.

Example: A person possess pornographic videos and keeps them locked in a hidden drawer in the library and uses them only in private. Breaking into the hidden drawer and taking videos out is a violation of privacy and private property.

Privacy should be based on more fundamental principle that each person is worthy of respect.
It protects capacity to enter into intimate relations, not to protect my reserve of generally withheld information but to enables one to make the commitment that underlies caring, as a commitment uniquely conveyed by one’s thoughts and witnessed by one’s actions.

Privacy as concealment.(隐藏) I have nothing to hide.
People are interested in privacy only because they want to conceal their wrongdoing or prevent embarrassment. They conceal to fool others- appear healthier, smarter, more honest. Implication: There is no fundamental right to privacy. One may have a right to conceal his body but no right to conceal personal information except in very few cases.
Example: USA PATRIOT ACT in 2001 gave the government the ability to inspect library records without warrant.

Solove Taxonomy of Privacy Problems

  • Daniel Solove critical of attempts to define privacy precisely.
    • No point in seeking to define privacy’s essence and core characteristics
  • Instead, take a bottom up approach and start with a list of the common privacy problems.
  • Hierarchical Taxonomy of Privacy: Does not tell us whether a particular action is right or wrong. It breaks it into pieces to identify the problems it presents.
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Panopticism(全景敞视主义)

  • Essay by Michel Foucault(1979): persistent surveillance in society
  • Awareness of surveillance causes self-discipline
  • Panopticon concept for prison design by Jeremy Bentham

Cultural setting

  • History of Private Life
  • Private life is not something given in nature from the beginning of time. It is a historical reality, which different societies have construed(解释) in different ways
  • The boundaries of private life are not laid down once and for all; the division of human activity between public and private spheres is subject to change(随时可能发生变化). Private life makes sense only in relation to public life.

Libel(诽谤) and International News Reporting

  • Libel is a crime of publishing or broadcasting false statements about another person, with the intent for harming the other person’s reputation
    • Most societies enforce criminal and civil penalties for libel
    • Typically, a statement can be libel only if the author claims it is a fact but it is actually false.
  • USA: Statement of fact, that is false and defamatory(诽谤), that causes actual injury.
  • Spain: Disclosure of facts relating to private life, which affect a person’s reputation and a good name.
  • China: Insulting statements may be found libel even if they do not contain false statement of fact

Chilling Effect(寒蝉效果)

  • Web based authors and publishes are open to lawsuits from every country and every jurisdiction(司法权)
  • Since different cultures have different views on what constitutes libel, that is having a chilling effect.
  • Chilling Effect is that one feels pressure not to do something, even if it is legal to do so(in their country), because of fear of prosecution(from the perspective of other countries)

Case study: Whether it is reasonable to intercept email?

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