Re: [ietf-privacy] Is there an official working definition for Privacy Online?

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]>]

(not necessarily in response to Christian)

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 12:08 AM, Christian Huitema <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Friday, April 17, 2015, at 9:14 AM, Dave Crocker wrote
>> ...
>> This translates into "privacy relates to controlling disclosure of
>> information about a person or organization."  Then add the
>> scope-of-control portion.
>
> There is indeed some fuzziness in the definition of privacy. I like the
> analysis in this Pew Research Center study on "Public Perceptions of Privacy
> and Security in the Post-Snowden Era:"
> http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/12/public-privacy-perceptions/. I think
> they do a good job relating threats to privacy and threats to personal
> security. To quote: "Beyond the frequency of individual words, when
> responses are grouped into themes, the largest block of answers ties to
> concepts of security, safety, and protection. For many others, notions of
> secrecy and keeping things 'hidden' are top of mind when thinking about
> privacy."

There is emerging academic work (not published yet, so I won't cite)
that discusses privacy as what philosophers call an "essentially
contested concept." The idea being that for some class of ideas and
concepts -- art, justice, freedom, etc. -- there is no single
definition and, instead, that the struggle around what they mean
defines them.

I realize that's some pretty non-technical and abstract thinking, but
for many folks (like some of us here) that have been involved for
decades in academic/industry/civil society kvetching on privacy and
defining it, the realization that the lack of a definition may in
itself define the thing is pretty important and profound.

I was a postdoc under NYU professor Helen Nissenbaum a while back and
at least in the academic privacy community, her notion of "contextual
integrity" is perhaps the biggest "definitional" thinking we've seen
in a decade or so. She has written a book on it, but I suggest anyone
interested read the following shorter article that hits the high
points:

http://www.amacad.org/publications/daedalus/11_fall_nissenbaum.pdf

best, Joe

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
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