Some folks following the blog have asked me why I have not commented on the issue of privacy, since a significant amount of my work over the last few years in electronic surveillance or the use of social-networking tools has touched on this subject. Okay, you asked for it! Here is a more comprehensive take on the subject. Have at it!
Privacy has long been interwoven into democratic rhetoric. In ancient times, citizens of Greece or Rome were granted certain protections for their families from public spaces. “Privates” in Latin means “not belonging to the state” or “not in public life” and tracks well with contemporary definitions. As we move rapidly into a global information economy, privacy in the current U.S. law applies to a small class of torts, public laws over certain kinds of information and electronic-surveillance rules. Privacy may expand, however, to become the ideological, cultural, and legal basis upon which an international society defines an individual’s relationship to other people, to corporate entities, and to governments. Privacy is to this era what human rights were to the modern political world of the 18th century: the central legal organizing principle for our future.
On a practical level, important questions remain to be worked out as Web sites and other digital systems allow unprecedented tracking of personal activity. Do people “own” their own information? What rights, if any, do individuals or groups have to information related to or about them in relation to data-collection companies, advertisers, governments, or other corporate entities, including online sites to which the user contributes content?
The kind of privacy policies common at universities and companies represent a good start, but more work needs to be done to create traditions, values, and rules that will preserve and protect privacy in this dynamic electronic world. We also need to start digital-literacy education early, emphasizing the themes of personal dignity and social fairness.
How people around the world will determine how much they want to be known, contacted, and represented by corporate entities, advertisers, or even “friends” remains to be seen. Expect a larger cultural movement demanding privacy reform — one that takes the full measure of what it means to be human in the information economy. —Tracy Mitrano
Tracy Mitrano, our January guest blogger, is director of information-technology policy in Cornell University’s Office of Information Technologies, where she also directs the computer policy and law program.
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