Information Technology and Privacy

Information Technology and Privacy

Privacy is a value in modern societies that corresponds with the ideal of the autonomous individual who is free to act and decide his own destiny. Yet, modern societies are also characterized by surveillance, a practice that tends to undermine privacy. Surveillance is the systematic observation of (groups of) people for specific purposes, usually with the aim of exerting some form of influence over them. Sociologist David Lyon has argued that surveillance has always been an important part of modern societies. The state engages in surveillance to protect national security and to fight crime, and the modern corporation engages in surveillance in the workplace to retain control over the workforce. Computerization from the 1960s onward has intensified surveillance by increasing its scale, ease and speed. Surveillance is partially delegated to computers that help in collecting, processing and exchanging data. Computers have not only changed the scale and speed of surveillance, they have also made a new kind of surveillance possible: dataveillance, which is the large-scale, computerized collection and processing of personal data in order to monitor people’s actions and communications. More and more, information technology is not just used to record and process static information about individuals, but to record and process their actions and communications. New detection technologies like smart closed-circuit television (CCTV), bio metrics and Intelligent User Interfaces, and new data processing techniques like data mining further exacerbate this trend. As Lyon has argued, the ease with which surveillance now takes place has made it a generalized activity that is routinely performed in all kinds of settings by different kinds of organizations. Corporations, for instance, have extended surveillance from the workplace to their customers (consumer surveillance). In addition, the 9/11 terrorist attacks have drastically expanded surveillance activities by the state. Many privacy disputes in today’s society result from tensions between people’s right to privacy and state and corporate interests in surveillance. In the information society, privacy protection is realized through all kinds of information privacy laws, policies and directives, or data protection policies, as they are often called in Europe. These policies regulate the harvesting, processing, usage, storage and exchange of personal data. They are often overtaken, however, by new developments in technology. However, privacy protection has also become a concern in the design and development of information technology. Information privacy has also become a major topic of academic study. Studies of information privacy attempt to balance privacy rights against other rights and interests, and try to determine privacy rights in specific contexts and for specific practices. Specialized topics include workplace privacy, medical privacy, genetic privacy, Internet privacy, and privacy in public