History and Philosophy of Privacy

1. History and Philosophy of Privacy September 4, 2007

2. Research and Communication Skills Finding info with search engines • General purpose search engines • Google, Yahoo, Altavista, A9, etc. • Clustered searching • Vivisimo, Dogpile • Search CS research literature • http://portal.acm.org • http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/ • http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ • http://scholar.google.com/

3. Research and Communication Skills Advanced searching • Boolean searching • Operators: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR • Implied operators: AND is often implied • Parentheses for grouping • Wildcards • Quotes • Getting to know the ins and outs of your favorite search engines • Many search engines do not use pure boolean searching • Most search engines have some special syntax • Search engines use different algorithms to determine best match

4. Research and Communication Skills Advanced Googling • See http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Google.html • Ranks results using PageRank algorithm, taking into account popularity, importance, word proximity • Special syntax • intitle, inurl, site, intext, filetype, daterange, numrange • Boolean operators: OR, - • Fuzzy searching: ~, .., * • Exact phrases: “” • 10-term limit • Special searches • Definitions (define), calculator, area codes, flight searches, and more

5. What is privacy? “Being alone.” - Shane (age 4)

6. Multiple conceptions of privacy • Personhood • Intimacy • Secrecy • Limited access to the self • Control over information

7. Westin “Privacy and Freedom” 1967 • “Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others” • “desire for privacy is never absolute” • “each individual is continually engaged in a personal adjustment process in which he balances the desire for privacy with the desire for disclosure and communication….”

8. Westin’s four states of privacy • Solitude • individual separated form the group and freed form the observation of other persons • Intimacy • individual is part of a small unit • Anonymity • individual in public but still seeks and finds freedom from identification and surveillance • Reserve • the creation of a psychological barrier against unwanted intrusion - holding back communication

9. Westin’s four functions of privacy • Personal autonomy • control when you go public about info • Emotional release • be yourself • permissible deviations to social or institutional norms • Self-evaluation • Limited and protected communication

10. Information Collection Surveillance Interrogation Information Processing Aggregation Identification Insecurity Secondary Use Exclusion Information Dissemination Breach of Confidentiality Disclosure Exposure Increased Accessibility Blackmail Appropriation Distortion Invasion Intrusion Decisional Interference Solove’s privacy taxonomy

11. Information vs. decisional privacy • Information privacy concerns the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information • Decisional privacy concerns the freedom to make decisions about one's body and family

12. Limited access vs. control • Privacy as limited access to self • the extent to which we are known to others and the extent to which others have physical access to us • Privacy as control over information • not simply limiting what others know about you, but controlling it • this assumes individual autonomy, that you can control information in a meaningful way (not blind click through, for example)

13. Multiple facets of privacy • How can posting personal information about myself on my web site result in a reduction of my privacy? How can it result in an increase in my privacy?

14. Privacy as deprivation? • Deprived of being heard and seen by others • Deprived of being contacted by others • Deprived of benefits that come as a result of your personal information being available to others

15. Privacy as animal instinct? • Is privacy necessary for species survival? Eagles eating a deer carcass http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/eagle/CaptureE63.html

16. Information privacy • In 17th century America, colonists began to collect information about each other • Census, birth and death records, school records, tax records • Informants reported people who behaved badly • Disorderly children, nightwalkers, Sabbath breakers, atheists, drunks

17. Privacy of personal space • Historically, depended a lot on the type and proximity of available housing • In 18th century Europe, most people lived in cities where houses were close together, but small number of people lived in each house • In 18th century America, people lived far away from each other but many people lived in each house and even shared beds

18. Communication privacy • When all communication was oral, communication privacy depended on • Communicating without someone overhearing • Communicating with people who wouldn’t tell others • Written communications brought new opportunities for privacy violations • In 18th century America, postal mail was not necessarily private • Sealing wax, basic encryption used to increase privacy • 1782 - Congress made it illegal to open other peoples’ mail • Later the invention of the adhesive envelope increased communications privacy

19. Telegraph • In the late nineteenth century the telegraph became a popular means of long distance communication • Messages could be coded, but you could not recover damages due to transmission errors if the message was coded • Telegraph operators were supposed to keep messages confidential • Occasional subpoenas for telegraph messages

20. Cameras • Cameras, especially portable “snap” cameras (1888), raised new privacy concerns • Telephoto lenses • Video cameras • Hidden cameras • Web cams • Satellite images

21. http://www.sggprivalite.com/ What aspects seem privacy invasive? How could the design be changed to reduce privacy concerns? The Prada NYC dressing room

22. Discussion questions • Which technologies are privacy invasive? • Which technologies are privacy protective? • Can we turn one into the other?

23. Privacy History References • Robert Ellis Smith. 2000. Ben Franklin’s Web Site: Privacy and Curiosity from Plymouth Rock to the Internet. Providence: Privacy Journal. • Alan Westin. 1967. Privacy and Freedom. New York: Atheneum.