1 Ethics of Computing MONT 113G, Spring 2012 Session 31 Privacy as a value

2 Privacy as an Individual Good The "right to privacy" is legally complicated. Based on 1st and 4th amendments Protects citizens from intrusion by governments Corporations treated like persons How do we protect individual's privacy from corporations? Privacy act of 1974 legislates some rights.

3 Privacy as a Value Is privacy an intrinsic or instrumental value? Fried (1968): Friendship, intimacy and trust cannot develop in societies under constant surveillance. (E.g. Orwell's 1984) Rachels (1975): Privacy is required for diversity of relationships. Control of information about ourselves is important for our autonomy. Need to release information about ourselves in some contexts, but should have control over whether it flows to other places.

4 Privacy as Contextual Integrity Nissenbaum (2004) argued that there are information norms for every domain of life. People have certain expectations about these in each domain: 1)What kinds of information is appropriate for this context? 2)How will information be distributed in this context? Examples of appropriate information: Applying for a loan Visiting a doctor Examples of distribution norms: Medical information Credit reports

5 Development of Norms Formal norms: Established by legislation or specific policies of an organization. Informal norms: Established and enforced by social expectations. Changing norms: New technology creates a "policy vacuum" for norms. New technology allows collection and distribution of new forms of information. Organizations may use the technology without informing clients. IT tools are often invisible to users and adopted without public announcement. This makes privacy difficult to protect.

6 Privacy as a Social Good Privacy as an Individual Good doesn't influence policy. Utilitarian arguments: Social goods trump individual goods. Example? Privacy as a Social Good provides more balance with other social goods such as security. How can we frame privacy as a social good?

7 Privacy and Democracy Privacy is essential to Democracy because: People under constant surveillance change their behavior. Examples: 1.Bentham's Panopticon 2.IT Society. How are we watched? Benefits of surveillance? Drawbacks of surveillance?

8 Privacy is Essential to Democracy In a democracy, citizens: must be free to exercise autonomy. must be able to think critically. must argue about issues and learn from argument. If it's too risky to argue for something new or challenge authority, democracy will not work. Johnson's view: Privacy, autonomy and democracy are so intertwined that you cannot have one without the other.

9 Data Mining Problems with data mining: The norms are often not subject to public discussion. The norms may be invisible to those being watched. Some people are singled out by the data mining program and others are not. Information may be merged and mined for patterns people may not have realized they were revealing. People are placed in categories based on data mining results. What is wrong with this?

10 Fair Information Practices How do we as a society protect privacy? Adopt, either through legislation or self-regulation, fair information practices. 1.No secret personal data record-keeping. 2.Individuals able to find out what information is recorded and how it is used. 3.Must be able to prevent information that from being used without consent. 4.There must be a way to correct information. 5.Organizations must assure the reliability of the data.

11 Other Safeguards Transparency: Information practices should be made clear to users. (Example of how not to do this--Citizens Bank Privacy statement). Opt-in vs. Opt-out It's better if people are given a choice to opt-in to a policy, rather than having the policy implemented and forcing people to opt-out. Example: Facebook, Beacon