A paper I wrote on individual measures to protect privacy for my Embedding Privacy class in the Fall; sometimes bone-headed, often repetitive, pretty representative. Preach on:
Just One View of Privacy
This paper concerns itself only with one conception of privacy: that privacy is essentially the line drawn between the interests of two parties and the information they share. In this sense, the nature and scope of privacy shifts with every exchange between the two parties, and fundamentally reflects the balance of power between them. For the purpose of this paper, the area of interest is additionally restricted to the question of how an individual can maintain a modest level of privacy in dealings with organizations, entities, and individuals who enjoy a relative power advantage.
Though somewhat narrow in scope, this situation is a common one and the questions raised are of particular interest to the author. An attempt is made to present a practical view without becoming mired in anything as mundane as techniques and protocols as these are already well-represented in the literature (see Schneier, Luna, et al.)
Introduction
The expanding range of threats to individual privacy have been extensively documented and analyzed and the threats are frequently enumerated in the popular media. Too often though, these portrayals take an overly-narrow view of the problem and perpetuate a misunderstanding of the issue. The gravest threat is not improper surveillance, identity theft, or invasive marketing efforts – it is an overall erosion of personal liberty. Most troubling of all though, is that scant attention is paid to what can be done to counteract this seemingly unstoppable erosion of individual privacy and liberty.
In many ways, though liberty is never explicitly mentioned, the tone of the conversation about personal privacy does reflect earlier conversations about personal liberty. There is certainly nothing new here – Justice Douglas discovered a “right of privacy” in the Constitution’s guarantees of liberty, and Justice Harlan, in his dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman (1961) wrote:
“This ‘liberty’ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints.”
While the concerns of an earlier time made it necessary to discern a sense of privacy that emanates from the “penumbra” of the guarantee of liberty, in our time where free action is circumscribed by sophisticated electronic surveillance, minimally-secured databases of personal information, and overly-permissive business and governmental practices, there can be no liberty without at least a basic assurance of privacy. With our “right to privacy” secured, we must use it as a shield, or more appropriately, a sword to defend personal liberty when it comes under attack.
Bureaucracies and other entities, in the course of pursuing their own, mostly benign interests, have constructed tools and adopted techniques that threaten personal liberty on a fundamental level. It is an issue predominantly of power. Individuals in dealing with these entities nearly always operate on the disadvantaged side of a power imbalance. A correcting force is needed – individuals must be sufficiently empowered to address on more equal terms the organizations that blindly threaten their liberty.
Addressing Privacy
In discussing possible defenses of privacy, Solove evaluates both market-based and regulatory approaches, and discusses their shortcomings. After dismissing them both as inadequate, he advocates reconstructing the architecture (97, 210) – fundamentally changing the ways in which private and public interests gather and use information. Though a noble concept and seemingly an ideal long-term solution, what is needed is an effective approach that can be implemented now.
Discussions about the erosion of privacy often fails to address the true source of the problem. Too much attention has been focused on the need for governments, corporations, and other entities to mend their errant ways and account for the damage their actions do to individual privacy. However, these organizations are merely pursuing their own ends in as logical a fashion as can be expected. Where there is nothing to benefit such an organization and no compelling penalty for pursuing their agenda, they will blithely stay the course. It is unreasonable to expect them to comply with a prosaic ideal of individual privacy and liberty and popular opinion has not yet reached a point where demands to do so must be taken seriously.
Unless and until there is a change at the organizational level, individual privacy must remain a fundamentally individual matter. Individuals must be conscious of the need for and importance of privacy and must take steps to protect it as they see fit. Bureaucracies will always suffer the same essential flaws, whether they take Kafkaesque, Orwellian, or Huxleyian tones and ultimately, responsibility rests with individuals as the first and most important line in defending individual privacy.
The most viable solution at the present time is one that treats individuals as individuals, as self-interested players who both benefit from and are injured by the trade in private information and the power imbalance it engenders. The only tenable goal for individuals is to swing, as much as possible, the balance of power to their favor and the only way to accomplish this is by considering the means by which they conduct their trade in the information economy.
Personal Privacy and Personal Responsibility
If an individual is to compete on equal footing, he or she must know the value of his or her privacy and the means for trading on it or protecting it as appropriate. Nearly every interaction involves a decision about whether or not to share private information. The onus is on the individual to rationally evaluate the worth of his or her privacy and to determine how to react to each such situation. Ultimately, privacy is a matter of personal responsibility – privacy only exists at the boundaries of our interactions with other individuals and organizations and its oscillations are tied to the balance of power we share with them.
Trade in privacy is fundamentally an individual concern and addresses the ways in which individuals intentionally or unwittingly disclose private information and the benefits they receive for its disclosure. This is a continual, daily process and involves actions as mundane as signing the visitor registry at a museum or providing work history and biographical data when applying for a job. Ideally in these situations what is gained is more valuable than what is disclosed.
Privacy protection, by contrast, encompasses a general set of precautions, safeguards, and practices for effecting the trade in private information. It is the street smarts, business savvy, and paranoiac behavior that define a set of rules for protecting secrets, space, and identity. The remainder of this paper is concerned with the issue of protecting privacy.
Protecting Privacy
One of the first lessons children learn concerns privacy; the admonition “Don’t give your name to strangers” still holds true. The urge to protect one’s privacy is a primal recognition of the power of concealed information – if holding private information makes one strong, then holding more private information, including information concerning others, makes one stronger still. Also, the urge to protect personal privacy does not arise solely from the pseudo-economic motives presented here – the reassurance and psychological benefits of even supposed privacy provide, arguably, an even stronger motive.
Legislation and regulation to the contrary, private information, once released, will not go back in the bottle. The proliferation of electronic databases ensures that any information disclosure will join the aggregate sum of all past and future disclosures to comprise a more-or-less accurate picture of the individual. Sir Francis Bacon’s aphorism “knowledge is power” has only grown more true in four hundred years. All attempts at protecting privacy must consider not just the value of the disclosure in question but also its value when combined with other disclosures.
Approaches to Individual Privacy
There are a number of ways an individual may minimize his or her privacy exposure. While the effectiveness of each approach ultimately depends on the situation, some general conclusions can be drawn about each:
Fragmenting
There are a number of benefits to be realized from fragmenting the persona or presenting a multiplicity of personas. If an individual can gain something by revealing private information, there are many cases where more can be gained by revealing the same information multiple times. The drawback here, of course, is in maintaining a corpus of personas, each possessing enough worthwhile private information to justify the effort.
Anonymizing
The most effective strategy for retaining control over personal information is to ensure that the other party has no conception of the individual as an individual. True anonymity means an individual is indistinguishable from all other anonymous individuals – any information gained by the other party is worthless in aggregate as it presents a fractured, disjointed representation.
What an individual loses by adopting this approach though is the benefits engendered by revealing and trading in personal information. Absolute anonymity is an almost untenable position in modern society.
Falsifying
By intentionally seeding databases with false or contradictory information, an individual may hope to reduce somewhat their privacy exposure. There are certainly instances where providing false, misleading, or contradictory information is an effective strategy, but while on its face an attractive approach, supplying false information poses a number of problems, both in terms of applicability and approach.
The chief problem with falsifying information is that it simply not effective in many cases. As databases continue to grow, the methods for discerning and resolving false or contradictory data only become more sophisticated. Scatter-shot falsification eventually yields to the algorithms employed in databases and the truth eventually outs. Another problem is that, in many cases, the most damning data wins: gay soldiers’ efforts to represent themselves as heterosexual have been undermined when other information about their sexual orientation is discovered (Musbach).
The most serious problem with this approach is that, especially when dealing with government entities, it may be illegal to supply false information. The end result of supplying false information in these situations may be far worse than a simple privacy breach.
Correcting
Some attention has been paid to the problem of inaccurate data. Though it is often possible and desirable to correct or redact errors when they are found, this is not a tenable approach for minimizing the overall level of privacy exposure – data proliferates among databases faster than it can be corrected. Combined with the closed nature of many databases and the fact that it is impossible to discern the content, much less the accuracy of all the data they contain, simple correction of inaccurate information can only go so far towards plugging the holes in personal privacy.
Minimizing
Greater personal responsibility must be taken here – by restricting data disclosure, individuals can minimize the effects of aggregate information. Good privacy hygiene starts at home and the best way to minimize privacy risks is to reduce the amount of information one gives out.
People are notoriously bad at evaluating risks, whether it be related to gambling, their own mortality (Gilbert), or information disclosure. The most mundane disclosures, in aggregate, comprise a fundamental threat to an individual’s privacy (Solove 1). Without knowing what data constitutes a serious disclosure when combined in aggregate, the only effective approach is to minimize data leakage as much as possible while still operating effectively in society. The unfortunate conclusion to be drawn is that a little paranoia can be good and that a lot of paranoia can be even better.
Education and Information
Practical issues of addressing personal privacy aside, the most important factor is education: individuals must be informed of the risk of privacy violation and the means by which they can secure their own privacy.
The most popular conception of privacy violation is of a sinister attacker targeting an individual for some malicious, illegal purpose, but this does not adequately capture the situation: in the United States, most privacy violations are legal (Schneier 29). The most common privacy breach takes the form of what Schneier calls “data harvesting” and what Solove calls “digital dossiers” and it is precisely this source of risk that must be mitigated and protected against.
Conclusions
In the long run, a combination of all approaches is required, but minimizing the overall level of private information disclosed is most effective. An individual must remain aware of the value of his or her privacy. Any effort to defend privacy demands vigilance, but since the reward is liberty, it’s usually worth the fight
Citations
Black, Jane. “Uncle Sam’s Security Breach.” Business Week Online August 28, 2003.
Gilbert, Daniel. “If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming.” Los Angeles Times July 2, 2006. <http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-gilbert2jul02,0,4254536.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary>
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Luna, J.J. How to be Invisible. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004.
Moran, Rick. “Liberty, Privacy, and Survival in the Age of Terror.” American Thinker December 21, 2005.
Musbach, Tom. “U.S. Military Fires Gays for Online Profiles.” Planet Out Network May 24, 2004. .
Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961)
Schneier, Bruce. Secrets & Lies. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, 2000.
Solove, Daniel J. The Digital Person. New York: The New York University Press, 2004.
Zalewski, Michal. Silence on the Wire. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2005.
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