Change Impacting Privacy

Posted by Editor SDC

I have finally gotten around to reading ‘Privacy in Context‘ – Helen’s Nissenbaum‘s excellent treatise on privacy.

I have finally gotten around to reading ‘Privacy in Context‘ – Helen’s Nissenbaum‘s excellent treatise on privacy.

Privacy, invasion of privacy, attacks on privacy – never seems to be out of the news.  Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook theme seems to be that privacy is a thing of the past.  Much of the behaviour of people in social networks would tend to suggest that attitudes to privacy have changed greatly.

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Helen Nissenbaum provides some to the background – what we mean by privacy, why it may be a good thing for the individual, why it may be a good thing for society.  And she considers the impact of changes in technology:

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  • ‘democratization of database technologies
  • information mobility
  • information aggregation
WRT social networks she considers three developments:
  • individuals publishing information about themselves
  • posting information about others on one’s web page
  • capacity to monitor and track others’ activities
I have to say that from a personal perspective I think the smart phone (with its close integration (in fact seamless) with social networking platforms e.g. picassa, google+, twitter, facebook has accelerated everything in the last 18-24 months.
I found the discussion about the benefits of privacy e.g. in people’s personal development very relevant – and reminded me of what society and individual may be losing through some of the so called advances.

Change impacting privacy is a post from: barryjogorman