Privacy

1
Privacy Cyberspace

• CSCI102 - Systems
• ITCS905 - Systems
• MCS9102 - Systems

2
Privacy in Cyberspace?

• Amount of personal information that can be
  gathered
• The speed at which personal information can be
  transmitted
• The duration of time that information can be
  retained
• The kind of information that can be transferred

3
What is Personal Privacy?

• All-or-nothing
• or
• dilutable?
• Freedom from physical intrusion
• Freedom from interference in ones personal
  affairs
• Access to control of personal information

4
Types of Privacy

• Accessibility privacy
• being free from intrusionUS constitution 4th
  amendment freedom from unreasonable intrusion
  or seizures by the government
• right to inviolate personality
• Response to the camera
• Focus on the harm that can be caused to a person
  or their possessions

5
Types of Privacy

• Decisional Privacy
• Freedom from interference in ones personal
  affairs
• No interference in making personal decisions
• Eg Not denied access to information about birth
  control
• Eg right to die
• Informational privacy
• Ones right to control access to and the flow of
  ones personal information

6
Comprehensive Account of Privacy

• James Moor (1997)
• an individual has privacy in a situation if in
  that particular situation the individual is
  protected from intrusion, interference, and
  information access by others
• Situation is vague
• allowing for zones, activities or
  relationships

7
Comprehensive Account of Privacy

• Naturally private vs. Normatively private
• Having privacy
• Where natural means may lose privacy, but it is
  not violated
• vs having a right to privacy
• Contexts where the meriting of protection is
  established

8
Why is Privacy Important?

• Valued for its own sake? intrinsic value
  (essential)
• (cf happiness)
• Valued as a means to an end instrumental worth
  (contingent)
• (cf money)

9
A Universal Value?

• Cultural variations in the value of privacy
• An Intrinsic Value?
• Fried (1990) argued privacy was both intrinsic
  instrumental contingent to achieve an end, but
  essential to achieve those ends
• A Social Value?
• Essential for democracy? (Westin 1967)
• If privacy is an individual value, it is
  outweighed by issues that benefit a group or
  society as a whole
• If privacy contributes to the greater social
  good, then it is closer in worth to competing
  social values

10
Gathering Personal Data

• Cybertech allows data collection about
  individuals without their knowledge

11
Gathering Personal Data Dataveillance Techniques

• Data surveillance data recording (Roger Clark
  1988)
• Mail interception phone-tapping predate
  cybertech
• Also video cameras human investigator
• Cybertech however provides an invisible
  supervisor
• In early terminal based mainframe systems, people
  feared government dataveillance, now however
  corporate entities (employers) are probably more
  feared

12
Gathering Personal Data Internet Cookies

• Files on websites that are sent to, and retrieved
  from, browsers to collect information about
  browsing habits
• Data collected is stored on the users hard-disk
  and can by accessed by a website when next
  visited. Can occur without a users consent or
  knowledge

13
Gathering Personal Data Internet Cookies

• PRO allows customised services
• CON a clear privacy invasion
• Normally a cookie only reports to the site that
  sent it
• Some services can retrieve other sites cookies
• DoubleClick banner advert service that appears
  on many sites, but can collate results from any
  site carrying that banner
• Should the default setting for browsers be
  cookies enabled?

14
Exchanging Personal Data

• Merging Computerised Records
• Seemingly innocent and nonthreatening data
  collected in one place can become dangerous if
  combined with data collected elsewhere
• Double Click tried to buy the Abacus Corp, which
  held marketing info incl. names telephone
  numbers

15
Exchanging Personal Data

• Matching Computerised Records
• Cross-checking two or more previously unrelated
  databases
• Consider Goverment agencies and others
• BSAA able to obtain details of business holders
• minimise government waste?
• Nothing to fear if youve done nothing wrong?
• Privacy is a legal right
• Legal rights are not absolute
• Violating the law forfeits legal
  rights______________________________
• Criminals forfeit right to privacy

16
Mining Personal Data

• Data mining is the indirect gathering of
  information through analysis of implicit patterns
  discoverable in data
• Can generate new non-obvious classification
  categories
• Current laws do not address the use of data-mined
  information

17
Data Mining Practices and Privacy Concerns

• Privacy laws cover personal data that is
• Explicit in databases
• Confidential in nature
• Exchanged between or across databases
• But not situations where information is
• Implicit in the data
• Non-confidential in nature
• Not exchanged between databases

18
Data Mining Practices and Privacy Concerns

• Data-mined information new facts, relations
  etc
• Often assumed to be public in nature
• Consider online agents etc which analyse
  e-commerce trends to modify product placement etc.

19
Protecting Personal Privacy in Public

• NPI Non-Public Personal Information
• Medical financial records etc
• PPI Public Personal Information
• Place of work, car you drive, school you attended
  etc.
• PPI tends to have little or no protection

20
Protecting Personal Privacy in Public

• In a physical shop they may record what you
  actually buy
• In an online shop they can record every move you
  make, build a profile and sell it!

21
Protecting Personal Privacy in Public

• Should business be able to own information
  about us and then sell it as they see fit?
• Old legal rule anything put by a person in the
  public domain becomes public information
  should this hold in the face of data mining and
  profiling?

22
Search Engines

• Content search allows search for instances of
  names
• Many email lists and discussion boards are
  archived

23
Accessing Personal Records

• Pre cybertech, PPI was available to costly to
  gather and analyse. Now it is cheap and easy to
  gather and analyse
• Should all public information be made available
  on the Internet?
• Does the government have no right to withhold
  public information from analysis on the Internet?

24
Privacy Enhancing Tools (PET)

• E-comm sector lobbying for self-regulation
  voluntary controls, but privacy advocates want
  more powerful legislation
• PET is a compromise
• Set of tools used by individuals,
• Eg encryption (incl. PGP)
• Eg Anonymizer.com
• Eg Crowds
• Not always usable for e-commerce

25
User Education About PET

• No requirement for online entrepreneurs to advise
  users of PET options, or to make such tools
  available
• PETs not bundled with mainstream OSs or appls
• Judith deCow (1997) suggests we should presume
  in favour of privacy and develop ways to allow
  individuals to determine for themselves how and
  when that presumption should be overridden

26
PET Informed Consent

• Informed consent is the traditional model for
  disclosure of personal data
• Online activities do not always adhere the
  principle
• You may willingly reveal personal data for one
  purpose, but have no knowledge of any secondary
  purposes

27
PET Informed Consent

• Does the online vendor now own the data and
  have the right to use it in any way or sell it
  etc.?
• What sort of informed consent can apply to data
  mining where unexpected linkages and facts can
  emerge afterwards?
• Currently the software industry operates largely
  on presumed consent

28
PET Social Equity

• Users should be empowered to choose when to
  disclose
• Some sites offer financial incentives to
  participate in data gathering discounts etc
• Is this fair for low-income users?
• Is it right that people can negotiate or barter
  away their rights? What if privacy is a morel
  and/or human right?
• Could we see a privacy rich privacy poor
  divide?

29
Industry Self-Regulation

• PETs may not be sufficient but alternatives to
  legislation may still exist
• Industry standards
• Self-regulation
• W3C announced P3P in 1997
• Platform for privacy preferences
• Allows browser set privacy options to be set in
  advance
• Doesnt impact on the use made of details that
  are released
• Negotiation agent trust engine technologies
• TRUSTe a self-regulatory branding system

30
Privacy Laws Data-Protection Principles

• Many countries considering strong privacy
  legislation
• US lags far behind the Europeans in this regard
• Euro legislation centres on processing and flow
  rather than on recording storage