Privacy as Contextual Integrity Helen Nissenbaum Department of Culture & Communications, NYU http://www.nyu.edu/proj

1. Privacy as Contextual IntegrityHelen NissenbaumDepartment of Culture & Communications, NYUhttp://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum

2. 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

3. 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 individual’s 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)

4. 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

5. 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 S’s 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.

6. 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?