Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, and Computer Science and Senior Fellow of the Information Law Institute at New York University. She is the coeditor of Academy and the Internet (2004) and Computers, Ethics, and Social Values (1995), and the author of Emotion and Focus (1985).

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PRIVACY IN CONTEXT

Stanford University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................ixIntroduction.........................................................................................11 Keeping Track and Watching over Us.................................................................212 Knowing Us Better than We Know Ourselves: Massive and Deep Databases...............................363 Capacity to Spread and Find Everything, Everywhere.................................................514 Locating the Value in Privacy......................................................................675 Privacy in Private.................................................................................896 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Privacy in Public..........................................................1037 Contexts, Informational Norms, Actors, Attributes, and Transmission Principles.....................1298 Breaking Rules for Good............................................................................1589 Privacy Rights in Context: Applying the Framework..................................................186Conclusion...........................................................................................231Notes................................................................................................245References...........................................................................................257Index................................................................................................281

Chapter One

The world is filled with devices, systems, and devices embedded in systems that have been designed to notice, watch over, and follow people; to track their actions, take in their attributes, and sometimes simply be aware of their presence. The frequency with which we are monitored and tracked by any given system can vary enormously, from one time only to episodically or continuously, as long as we are in the scope of its sensorium. Although increasingly enabled by technology, monitoring and tracking is not a new addition to the range of human social activities. Nor is it necessarily mediated, as there are countless mundane ways in which people are tracked and monitored: teachers take attendance, parents watch toddlers in a park, and coaches keep track of athletes' performance. Further, although privacy concerns accompany many contemporary monitoring and tracking practices, this does not necessarily need to be a factor, as when physicians monitor the heart rates of their patients or Olympic judges scrutinize and evaluate athletes' routines.

Yet with advances in digital media we have witnessed a dramatic rise in technically mediated monitoring, oft en emerging as a first-round solution to a wide range of social needs and problems. Not only is there an increase in sheer frequency of technology-mediated monitoring and tracking but a resulting shift in its nature-automated, undiscriminating, and accommodating new subjects, monitors, and motives. Following at the heels of these changes, there is growing discomfort, suspicion, and perplexity. In this chapter a variety of devices and systems, currently in play or under consideration, that have surfaced in the general consternation over information technology and its threats to privacy are surveyed.

A word on terminology: the term surveillance is frequently used to cover much of what I discuss in this chapter. The reason I opt for monitoring and tracking instead is that surveillance is usually associated with a set of political assumptions; namely, that monitoring is performed "from above" as subjects of surveillance are monitored by those in authority or more powerful than them for purposes of behavior modification or social control as sought or determined by those conducting the surveillance. Although surveillance studies are an important neighboring field, my initial goal here is to describe a range of technology-based systems and practices ("socio-technical" systems) without simultaneously theorizing about the uses to which they are put.

Direct and Indirect Monitoring and Tracking

In some cases, monitoring is an explicit and intended feature of a system. In one familiar example, video surveillance (commonly called closed-circuit television, or CCTV in the United Kingdom), video-recording cameras are placed in strategic locations such as the workplace, airports, train and subway stations, public streets, squares and parks, shopping malls and stores, parking garages, and schools (Duong 2005). The CCTV cameras capture visual images, which may be viewed in real time on closed-circuit monitors, recorded and stored for later viewing, or communicated off-site via electronic networks. Cheaper equipment and advances in performance, combined with social and political drivers such as fear of crime and terror, have resulted in the proliferation of video surveillance to the extent that people going about their daily business in urban settings can expect to have their images monitored and recorded an average of 300 times a day by thirty separate CCTV systems (Rosen 2004). In the United Kingdom, an enthusiastic proponent of these systems, estimates suggest that close to one-fifth of the world's CCTV cameras are housed there, with more than 4.3 million installed as of 2004 (Frith 2004). Ongoing improvements in this technology offer higher-resolution images (2048 x 1536, or 3 megapixels) (Bodell 2007), more comprehensive coverage through greater range of camera motion and wider-angled lenses, digital encoding and compression techniques to enhance storage, ease of communication, and data processing.

Other modalities besides the visual serve as the basis for monitoring. Sound recording and wiretapping, with its long and controversial history, continue to make front-page news and to inspire court cases and legislation (Lichtblau and Risen 2005; "Spying on Americans" 2007; Lichtblau 2008). Less salient, although as much a part of the landscape, are computerized tracking systems that integrate motion, touch, light, and heat detection; chemical sensors primarily advanced for monitoring environmental conditions-which add another sensory dimension to the field (Estrin 2007); and systems based on the transmission of radio frequency signals that facilitate point-to-point communication between receivers and embedded transmitters. (The case of radio frequency identification [RFID] is discussed at length below.) In some cases, the trend is toward systems of networked sensors that are so small as to be imperceptible by humans, some even on the nanoscale (Wolfe 2003).

Although many existing and envisaged uses of sensor networks may hold no relevance for privacy, it takes no great leap of imagination to extrapolate from these to ones that do raise questions. One application, already a step beyond the laboratory, involves integrated monitoring systems incorporating a variety of sensing devices installed in homes. The positive potential of these systems in monitoring the elderly living on their own carries with it a worrying potential of intrusive surveillance in all homes. (Technologies advertised for in-home use for the elderly include ADT Security's QuietCare, SeniorSafe@Home, and iCare Health Monitoring [Larson 2007]; Intel,...