NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Important Paper: "Databuse: Digital Privacy and the Mosaic"
Important Paper: "Databuse: Digital Privacy and the Mosaic"
http://j.mp/g2xqh1 (This message in Google Buzz)
- - -
http://j.mp/eb9jAo (Brookings Institution)
This paper by Benjamin Wittes of The Brookings Institution is a must
read for anyone dealing with technology privacy issues. I can't
overemphasize its potential importance in terms of providing a useful
framework for further exploration of these issues. Essentially, it
emphasizes the fact that our personal information represents a
"mosaic" of individual data elements, and that it is abuse of this
data, not its mere existence per se and use for "good" purposes, that
is actually at the core of so many privacy-related debates today.
Frankly, I don't actually expect his carefully reasoned analysis to
quiet the emotional, illogical, frenetic shouting about these issues
from some quarters -- that "lynching mob" drumbeat that seems hellbent
on creating ill-advised legislative "remedies" that may be far worse
than any perceived diseases. But Benjamin certainly should be
congratulated for trying to inject some additional sanity into these
all too commonly raucous privacy policy disputes.
Two quotes I've selected from his paper are below.
--Lauren--
-----------------------------
"The databuse conception of the user's equity in the mosaic is more
modest than privacy. It doesn't ask to be "let alone." It asks,
rather, for a certain protection against tangible harms as a result of
a user's having entrusted elements of his or her mosaic to a third
party. Sometimes, to be sure, these tangible harms will implicate
privacy as traditionally understood, but sometimes, as I will explain,
they will not. Think of it as a right to not have your data rise up
and attack you."
...
"Behavioral advertising upsets privacy advocates for a variety of
reasons, a mixture of privacy as sentiment, concern about harms to
individuals, and concern about data collection under false pretenses.
A databuse focus here would substantially narrow the range of anxiety.
The fact of using someone's data to market products to that person
does not in-and-of-itself do the person any damage. Matching consumers
to products they wish to buy is a service, not a harm, after all. And
we are not such automatons that we are unable to avoid buying things
that marketers send our way. What's more, the notion that companies
that give us some benefit in exchange for our data must then refrain
from using that data to sell things to us because of the way it makes
us feel seems insubstantial-a demand to reap the benefits of a
transaction without paying the costs of it. If one doesn't want people
using data to market products, one should not give one's data away to
marketers."
-- Benjamin Wittes / The Brookings Institution
"Databuse: Digital Privacy and the Mosaic"
--------------------------------------------------------------
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com