The importance of privacy revisited

Metaphilosophy, 1997

For more than thirty years an extensive and significant philosophical debate about the notion of privacy has been going on. Therefore it seems puzzling that most current authors on information technology and privacy assume that all individuals intuitively know why privacy is important. This assumption allows privacy to be seen as a liberal "nice to have" value: something that can easily be discarded in the face of other really important matters like national security, the doing of justice and the effective administration of the state and the corporation. In this paper I want to argue that there is something fundamental in the notion of privacy and that due to the profoundness of the notion it merits extraordinary measures of protection and overt support. I will also argue that the notion of transparency (as advocated by Wasserstrom) is a useless concept without privacy and that accountability and transparency can only be meaningful if encapsulated in the concept of privacy. From philosophical and legal literature I will discuss and argue the value of privacy as the essential context and foundation of human autonomy in social relationships. In the conclusion of the paper I will discuss implications of this notion of privacy for the information society in general, and for the discipline of information systems in particular.

International Data Privacy Law, 2011

Law and Philosophy, 2003

A free society favours the diffusion of information as a solid basis for a free and committed citizenship and the control of governmental and market institutions.

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2016

Internet Policy Review, 2019

This contribution provides a short introduction into the conceptual and socio-technical development of privacy. It identifies central issues that inform and structure current debates as well as transformations of privacy spurred by digital technology. In particular, it highlights central ambivalences of privacy between protection and de-politicization and the relation of individual and social perspectives. A second section connects these issues to the influential texts and discussions on digital privacy. In particular, we will demonstrate privacy in digital societies is to be conceived in a novel way, since contemporary socio-technical conditions unsettle central assumptions of established theories: forms of perceptions, social structure or individual rights. Thus, a final third paragraph summarises theoretical innovations triggered by this situationespecially research from computer science to the social sciences and law and philosophy highlighting the requirement to take groups, social relations and broader socio-cultural contexts into account.

The publications of the MultiScience - XXXII. MicroCAD International Scientific Conference, 2018

Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy, 2022

This chapter introduces relevant privacy frameworks from academic literature that can be useful to practitioners and researchers who want to better understand privacy and how to apply it in their own contexts. We retrace the history of how networked privacy research first began by focusing on privacy as information disclosure. Privacy frameworks have since evolved into conceptualizing privacy as a process of interpersonal boundary regulation, appropriate information flows, design-based frameworks, and, finally, user-centered privacy that accounts for individual differences. These frameworks can be used to identify privacy needs and violations, as well as inform design. This chapter provides actionable guidelines for how these different frameworks can be applied in research, design, and product development.

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 2013

Privacy and data protection are recognized as fundamental human rights. 1 They underpin human dignity and other values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. Indeed they have become two of the most important human rights of the modern age. However, new technologies undermine individual rights because they facilitate the collection, storage, processing and combination of personal data for the use not only of government agencies, but also of businesses.