Privacy as Contextual Integrity Helen Nissenbaum Department of Culture

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Privacy as Contextual IntegrityHelen
NissenbaumDepartment of Culture
Communications, NYUhttp//www.nyu.edu/projects/ni
ssenbaum
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Overview

• What is privacy and why do we care about it (if
  we do)?
• Definitions
• Control versus Access
• Descriptive versus normative
• In search of a normative foundations for privacy
  not a court of law but a court of conscience
• BUT Conflicts, tradeoffs, balancing
• Principles -- e.g. sensitivity of information
• Problem privacy in public (aggregation, data
  mining, etc.)
• Solution fight it out interest politics revert
  to dogmatism
• Look for guidance at societal level

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What is Privacy? . Definitions

• Privacy is not simply an absence of information
  about us in the minds of others rather it is the
  control we have over information about ourselves.
  --Charles Fried
• Privacy is a limitation of others access to an
  individual through information, attention, or
  physical proximity. --Ruth Gavison
• Privacy is the right to control information about
  and access to oneself. -- Priscilla Regan
• Common Law Right to Privacy (as characterized by
  Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, 1890) An
  individuals right of determining, ordinarily, to
  what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and
  emotions shall be communicated to others.
• "Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or
  institutions to determine for themselves when,
  how, and to what extend information about them is
  communicated to others." (p. 7)
• "...privacy is the voluntary and temporary
  withdrawal of a person from the general society
  through physical or psychological means, either
  in a state of solitude or small-group intimacy
  or, when among larger groups, in a condition of
  anonymity or reserve." (p. 7)
• Westin, Alan F. Privacy and Freedom. (New York
  Atheneum, 1967)

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Overview

• What is privacy and why do we care about it (if
  we do)?
• Definitions
• Control versus Access
• Descriptive versus normative
• In search of a normative foundations for privacy
  not a court of law but a court of conscience
• BUT Conflicts, tradeoffs, balancing
• Principles -- e.g. sensitivity of information
• Problem privacy in public (aggregation, data
  mining, etc.)
• Solution fight it out interest politics revert
  to dogmatism
• Look for guidance at societal level

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Privacy as Contextual Integrity

• Norms of Appropriateness determine what types of
  information are/are not appropriate for a given
  context
• Norms of Distribution (Flow, transfer) determine
  the principles governing distribution (flow,
  transfer) of information from one party to
  another.
• S shares information with R at Ss discretion
• R requires S to share information
• R may freely share information about S
• R may not share information about S with anyone
• R may share information about S under specified
  constraints
• Information flow is/is not reciprocal
• Etc.
• Contextual Integrity, is respected when norms of
  appropriateness and distribution are respected
  it is violated when any of the norms are
  infringed.

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Questions

• Can we develop systematic ways to inform the
  technical mission of privacy-preserving data
  transactions (including data-mining) with
  contextual norms?
• Meta-question If this is a beginning, how do we
  establish meaningful, ongoing conversation across
  the disciplines -- despite vast differences in
  knowledge-bases and methodologies?