Contemporary Privacy Issues - Introduction - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Willis H. Ware

1. Introduction
2. Historical Development
3. United States Posture
4. Source of the Problem
5. Privacy as a Public Policy Issue
6. Contemporary Privacy
6.1 Current Example
7. Public Policy Again
7.1 An Illustration – CNI
8. The Broadened Public Issue
9. Possible Approaches to Protection
10. Related Effects
11. Privacy as Social Equity
12. New Privacy Versus Old
13. Context for New Privacy
14. Privacy Versus Public Distaste
15. The Future for Privacy
16. References

Introduction

This paper broadly discusses the personal privacy issue as it initially developed and how it has changed as a result of the information industry. It makes several suggestions for attempting to deal with the contemporary privacy question as a significant public policy issue but takes no position on the “right answer.”

By way of clarification, this paper does not address privacy issues that are constitutionally based (e.g., the right to make certain decisions about oneself independently of the state – abortion); nor does it address the ones that derive from tort law (e.g., right of a prisoner not to be under constant surveillance); nor does it address other forms of privacy such as the physical invasion of one’s space or the psychological invasion of one’s emotional sphere.

Neither does it address computer security which, as a management and technical matter, is closely connected with privacy, but its principal thrust is to the protection of data and to assurance of certain aspects of it (e.g., confidentiality, integrity).

This paper concentrates solely on the dimension of privacy that is related to the use of information about people. It has been in the past called “personal privacy” or “information privacy,” but the issue is larger now than either of the terms has traditionally implied. Today, informational or personal privacy must be considered as a much broader issue than it was throughout the 1970s. The existence, influence, and activities of an information industry has created an entirely new dimension to the issue.

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