Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age

Citation

Fry, J. (2008), "Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age", Online Information Review, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 541-542. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520810897449

The central focus in this work is the impact of advanced data‐gathering technologies on informational privacy. This comprehensive overview of emergent technologies, practices and policies also provides a conceptual framework for ways of thinking about privacy. This is achieved by highlighting the many social, economic and political connotations of privacy, such as privacy as a fundamental right compared with personal information as an object of property. The contextual nature of privacy notions, perceptions and expectations is emphasised, with the main thesis identifying three drivers of change that can be summarised thus:

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  Technological developments in information communication technologies have led to a greater threat to our privacy, particularly in the context of the internet, networked digital databases and third party re‐use. Previously, personal data were protected by limited connectivity between government or commercial databases, so information privacy was less of a concern.

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  Societal shifts relate to the kind of information we need to exchange in order to live our day‐to‐day lives. The fact that we as citizens routinely provide increasing amounts of personal data in digital form related to such critical areas as health means that we are more likely to become “conditioned” to have a more relaxed attitude towards privacy.

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  Discontinuities in circumstances are national or international events that change our attitudes to privacy. For example, in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in the USA we are perhaps more willing to surrender our privacy for the benefit of national security.

The main thesis also draws attention to the need to balance competing interests in considering social, legal or technical interventions to protect privacy, on the one hand, and enable e‐commerce and digital citizenry on the other.

The legal landscape and privacy policy in the USA are considered in depth, with some limited consideration of international perspectives and the impact of non‐US law. Privacy issues across a wide range of organisational and sectoral contexts, e.g. education, health and libraries, are discussed. The tension vis‐a‐vis information privacy and national security is explored in light of emergent practices and policy around data re‐use, aggregation and mining.

The book is an output of the Committee on Privacy in the Information Age commissioned by the US National Research Council, and its recommendations are necessarily specific to the context of the USA. The global nature of the technological scenarios being considered, however, does provide sufficient material to resonate with a generic cultural context of any information society. The comprehensiveness of coverage reflects the broad remit of the committee, and specialists in ethics and information policy may not find many surprises among its chapters.

These limitations not withstanding, the book provides a thorough and detailed introduction to privacy issues in an era of increased online connectivity and ubiquitous computing and will be of interest to a generalist academic audience and to readers unfamiliar with the array of perspectives, approaches and competing stakeholders relating to information privacy in the digital age. It also has potential as a useful teaching resource.