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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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