1. Privacy as Contextual Integrity Helen Nissenbaum Department of Culture & Communications, NYU

2. Overview What is privacy and why do we care about it (if we do)?
Definitions
Control versus Access
Descriptive versus normative
In search of a normative foundations for privacy “not a court of law but a court of conscience…”
BUT … Conflicts, tradeoffs, balancing
Principles -- e.g. sensitivity of information
Problem: privacy in public (aggregation, data mining, etc.)
Solution: fight it out; interest politics; revert to dogmatism
Look for guidance at societal level

3. What is Privacy? …. Definitions
Privacy is not simply an absence of information about us in the minds of others; rather it is the control we have over information about ourselves. --Charles Fried
Privacy is a limitation of others’ access to an individual through information, attention, or physical proximity. --Ruth Gavison
Privacy is the right to control information about and access to oneself. -- Priscilla Regan
Common Law Right to Privacy (as characterized by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, 1890): An individual’s right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others.
"Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extend information about them is communicated to others." (p. 7)
"...privacy is the voluntary and temporary withdrawal of a person from the general society through physical or psychological means, either in a state of solitude or small-group intimacy or, when among larger groups, in a condition of anonymity or reserve." (p. 7)
Westin, Alan F. Privacy and Freedom. (New York: Atheneum, 1967)

4. Overview What is privacy and why do we care about it (if we do)?
Definitions
Control versus Access
Descriptive versus normative
In search of a normative foundations for privacy “not a court of law but a court of conscience…”
BUT … Conflicts, tradeoffs, balancing
Principles -- e.g. sensitivity of information
Problem: privacy in public (aggregation, data mining, etc.)
Solution: fight it out; interest politics; revert to dogmatism
Look for guidance at societal level

5. Privacy as Contextual Integrity
Norms of Appropriateness determine what types of information are/are not appropriate for a given context
Norms of Distribution (Flow, transfer) determine the principles governing distribution (flow, transfer) of information from one party to another.
S shares information with R at S’s discretion
R requires S to share information
R may freely share information about S
R may not share information about S with anyone
R may share information about S under specified constraints
Information flow is/is not reciprocal
Etc.
Contextual Integrity, is respected when norms of appropriateness and distribution are respected; it is violated when any of the norms are infringed.

6. Questions
Can we develop systematic ways to inform the technical mission of privacy-preserving data transactions (including data-mining) with contextual norms?
Meta-question: If this is a beginning, how do we establish meaningful, ongoing conversation across the disciplines -- despite vast differences in knowledge-bases and methodologies?