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Privacy as Contextual Integrity
The privacy issue is at the core of the tradeoffs we have to weigh when evaluating the feasibility of deploying any advanced technology system. An impact assessment should balance the public security interests against privacy rights of the citizens. Standard ethical and political theories of privacy tend to offer an account of what privacy is and explain why it ought to be valued and protected in liberal democracies. Yet in a world where the ability to handle data is rapidly outpacing agreement about how that ability should be used, the standard approach to privacy is sometimes difficult to be applied. While never before in history the average citizen has been more concerned with personal privacy (as many public polls worldwide repeatedly indicate), never before in history has one’s life being lived in public. Every street in major cities has a surveillance camera. Each transaction is tracked. The moment one takes out a credit card, connects to the internet and talks on a cellular, one has given up her privacy. Critics argue that people do not require complete privacy. They may share information with others as long as certain norms are met. The framework of “contextual integrity” tries to explain why certain patterns of data flow provoke public outcry in the name of privacy and why some do not.

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Last post by mosesj
Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:42 pm
Body Issues (Gender, Ethnicity, Disability and Age-related issues)
Sensitive bodily issues may affect biometrics and personal detection technologies and be used to categorize and stigmatize the most vulnerable groups. This could be further impaired by new X-ray body-scanning devices, which can see through clothing and show a person's naked body. These devices could also expose highly personal details such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of breasts and genitals. Some populations have difficulty using certain biometric capture devices. Difficulties may be encountered with the degree of alignment necessary in the feature capturing process or with certain inherent characteristics of a given target population (e.g. the elderly tend to have very dry skin, which can make adequate contact with certain types of fingerprint capture devices difficult; facial recognition of children is often problematic). Most biometric systems and some detection technologies can also collect ancillary information like gender, age, height, face morphology, skin and eye colour. As a consequence these technologies could be surreptitiously used for ethnic classification. The role played by ethnic classification on identity documents in crimes of genocide in Rwanda (not to mention the infamous "J-stamp" introduced on ID cards by Nazi Germany) is well known. If no safeguard is provided, data collected during screening procedures and identification might become in certain political regimes a tool for ethnic classification or other kind of mass categorisation, whose ethical and political consequences could be appalling.

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9 Posts

Last post by gelanyi
Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:50 am
Outsourcing of Systems for Detection-Identification-Authentication
The growing proliferation of technologies for personal detection and identification has to a large extent blurred the lines between the public and the private. Growing number of national and local agencies are outsourcing their security operations. Critics warn that the rush to privatize might offer short-term benefits, while jeopardizing long term citizens’ civil rights and State prerogatives. The European Data Protection Supervisor has recently considered that “reception of the application form and taking of the biometric identifiers could be carried out by an external service provider” though “outsourcing the processing of visa application to a private company should be admissible only if it involves a place under diplomatic protection, and is based on contractual clauses providing for effective oversight and liability of the contractor”. No doubts that this opinion is drafted with great care and attention for data protection. However, there are also little doubts that having the processing of visa applications carried out by an external service provider in a third country has a number of consequences in terms of the protection of the very sensitive data collected. Still more seriously we are before a paradigm shift. Historically the coincidence between state, nation and territory made it possible for the State to offer in the same while security and identity management to its citizens. In a world in which such coincidence tends to dissolve - where identity management could be ensured more efficiently by private software companies - should a new constitutional pact between the state and its citizens be required?

15 Topics

17 Posts

Last post by gelanyi
Mon Aug 30, 2010 5:58 am

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