Overview

• Discussion Objectives
• General Definition
• Units of Analysis
• Political
• Socio-Cultural
• Personal
• Some Questions

Discussion Objectives

• Present the concepts from the first half of the paper and Part One of Westin's Privacy and Freedom
• Tie the personal criteria back to policy specifications
• Motivate dialog regarding how these concepts can be used as validation and requirements for privacy policy specifications

Westin's Definition of Privacy

"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." (Westin, p. 7, 1967)

• Balance between
• Privacy
• Disclosure - necessary to make use of information
• Balance of these form the choices that efficiently we function within society
• What shapes the balance between these?
• Political
• Socio-Cultural
• Personal (perhaps the most immediately relevant)
• Each of these shapes how efficaciously organizations at each of these levels operates depending on the balance between privacy and disclosure

Political and Socio-Political Context

• Three privacy positions
• High privacy position: assigns primary value to privacy claims, has high organizational distrust, and advocates comprehensive privacy interventions through legal rules and enforcement
• Limited-privacy position: views privacy claims as usually less worthy than business efficiency and societal-protection interests, is generally trustful of organizations, and opposes most new regulatory interventions as unnecessary and costly
• Balanced-privacy position: values privacy strongly but seeks tailored legal interventions that address demonstrated abuses, along with voluntary organizational-policy initiatives intended to promote individual privacy choices

Political and Socio-Political Context

• Based largely on ideology
• Describes the paradigm that a country or culture follows
• A few of categorizations
• Deferential democratic balance
• England
• Structured, high level of individual privacy, trust of the establishment
• Authoritarian democratic balance
• West Germany (Bonn Republic)
• Respect for officialdom, privacy for conformists, secrecy for government, acceptance of surveillance of non-conformists
• Egalitarian democratic balance
• United States
• Balance between the libertarian ideal and demands for social egalitarianism and fundamental openness

Socio-Cultural Context

• Emerging expectations of a society with regard to what should be considered private
• Source and driver of change
• Structured by culture and norms
• Hairstyle
• Sexual orientation
• Biometric information
• Genetic information
• Ideological or religious beliefs
• Culture: Javanese and Balinese instance

Personal Context

• Solitude - not directly applicable?
• Intimacy
• Categories
• Spouse/Significant other
• Family
• Friends
• Acquaintances
• Coworkers
• Business partners
• May be at different levels of ordinal intimacy but in different contexts
• Can these contexts be likened to social cliques?
• Anonymity - nobody knows you're a dog on the Internet
• Public privacy
• Our friend the Internet exhibitionist
• Emotional outlet
• Reserve
• Typically considered social etiquette queues or psychological tactics for dealing with situations
• British conversation versus US
• Cues indicating privacy behaviors
• Explicit notifications?
• Expectations?

Some Questions

• Intimacy and anonymity
• The levels and contexts of intimacy seem to be related to social cliques. How would one manage a FOAF to only provide information about the friends relevant to that clique/context/level of intimacy?
• Given that privacy is shaped by institutions as well as individuals, what are the non-technical requirements that make or break the types of solutions we are looking at?
• Sources of information (facts)?
• Maintenance of those facts?
• Legitimacy of the maintainers?

References

[1] A. F. Westin. Privacy and Freedom. Atheneum, 1967.
[2] A. F. Westin. Social and political dimensions of privacy. Journal of Social Issues, 59(2), 2003.