Week 13: Privacy

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Week 13 Privacy

• Eric Cook
• ericcook_at_umich.edu
• Guest Lecture SI/SOC 110
• Nov. 25, 2008

Portions of these slides were taken from slide
and lecture materials authored by Prof. Robert
Frost.
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Privacy as space of tension
What is privacy in the information age? At the
boundaries between Hidden ? Public Individual ?
Collective Defined by interactions between Laws
Culture Norms Systems.
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Photo of Sternlab Body-Laptop Interface from
http//www.flickr.com/photos/bekathwia/2414194397/
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A few definitions

• Lewis D. Brandeis, US Supreme Court (1929) the
  right to be left alone.
• Ruth Gavison three elements in privacy secrecy,
  anonymity and solitude.
• Fernando Volio Jimenez all human rights are
  aspects of the right to privacy.

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Four Key Aspects of Privacy

• Information privacy
• Bodily privacy
• Communications privacy
• Territorial privacy
• see http//www.privacyinternational.org/survey/ph
  r2003/overview.htmAspects20of20Privacy
• in this weeks readings for more discussion

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A Brief History of Privacy

• The state vs. the people (notice the modern
  terminology) in the British Empire, 1640-1780
• Traditionally based in security of ones goods
  and property freedom from, rather than freedom
  to. A mans home is his castle.
• Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable
  search and seizure there is no explicit right
  to privacy written into US Bill of Rights

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Contemporary Legal Interpretations of Privacy

• Fourth Amendment litigation since 1960
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 1964 Sex information as
  private, restriction on its diffusion as
  invasion of privacy.
• Roe v. Wade, 1973 The privacy of reproductive
  choice decisions.
• Lawrence v. Texas, 2003 overturned Bowers v.
  Hardwick, 1986 privacy of choices about sexual
  orientation.
• 2003 MA Court on gay marriage combo of privacy
  and equal protection.

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Again, what is privacy in the information age?

• Privacy as right.
• Privacy as negotiation.
• Privacy as trade-off.
• Negotiations ongoing -- at level of the
  individual, and at the level of society

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Example Medical Records

• Legally vs. functionally private Only your
  doctor, your nurses, your hospital administrative
  staff, the billing company, the transcription
  services, the insurance company, and (if you're
  using Google Health) Google's servers have access
  to your secrets.
• Under HIPAA, you can ask this information not be
  shared with other doctors in the same practice,
  but however, they do not have to agree to do
  what you ask. (quoting from http//www.hhs.gov/oc
  r/hipaa/consumer_rights.pdf)

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More Examples

• Online transactions Privacy settings in
  Facebook, secure banking, secure shopping,
  browser cookies.
• Privacy and Security CCTV surveillance, airport
  watch lists, RFIDed passports.

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Trade-offs and Tensions

• Each of these involve different kinds of
  tradeoffs and tensions.
• Tensions between different agendas of interests,
  agenda that may be opposing or at least not
  always aligned or considerate of one another.

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Potential Benefits of Revealing Information

• Personalized Services
• Customization of Information
• Payments (in form of discounts/customer loyalty
  programs)
• Convenience
• Safety/Security

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Downsides of Revealing

• Profiling (individually and in the aggregate)
• Tracking (by govt, by companies, by individuals)
• Unauthorized unexpected reuse in other contexts
• Loss of control of your information

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Technology New Opportunities, New Issues

• Data mining in various forms Network science
  new modes of analysis on large datasets example,
  Netflix de-anonymization.
• Breakdowns
• at the technical level -- system "hiccups"
  revealing data.
• at the people level -- people leaving laptops at
  the airport.
• New contexts for negotiation example, Google
  maps street view

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Localized Contexts are Now Globally Accessible
Google maps screenshot image from
http//blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/request_f
or_urb.html
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Illusions of privacy

• Lack of transparency, or the illusion of privacy.
  
• You can't see anyone looking at you, so you feel
  like a setting is safe/anonymous.
• Except, er..

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It isnt.
EtherPEG screengrab image from SXSW06 conference
(image source http//flickr.com/photos/riddle/11
1046761)
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Reuse, transparency and expectations

• Another example of unexpected reuse downstream
  Usenet data from the early 90s --gt reappears in
  Google groups a decade later.
• New kinds of automated archives Google caches,
  Internet Archive, etc.
• Once it is in these archives, how do you get it
  out? and should you? Who decides?

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Broader Setting A Culture of Surveillance
?
Big Brother Poster image from http//blogs.zdnet.c
om/open-source/?cat72 Big Brother Season 8 cast
image from http//cavenger.wordpress.com
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So what do we do about this?

• Anything? Nothing? Give up our embarrassment?
  Webcam out our lives? Assume that government and
  corporations (and our neighbors) have our best
  interests in mind?
• What do you do about managing your privacy?
• Not idle questions, because

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These are decisions.

• Made by people, in professional settings like
  many of you will be in shortly.
• Design decisions
• Technology decisions
• Management decisions
• Legal decisions
• Policy decisions