Track Report

National Conference on Computing and Values
Report on the Track: Privacy and Confidentiality Report
of the NCCV Working Group on Privacy and Confidentiality

JACQUES N. CATUDAL, Ph.D.

The NCCV Working Group on Privacy and Confidentiality:

• Introduction
• Seeking a Clearer Understanding of “Privacy” and “Confidentiality”
• The Use and Abuse of Electronic Mail and Electronic Bulletin Boards
• Electronic Databases and Privacy
• Conclusions

Introduction

These collective reflections on privacy, confidentiality and computers are necessarily brief, impressionistic and incomplete. Given the vastness of the topic, and the requirement to produce concrete recommendations by the close of the Conference, the Working Group focused discussion on three areas: (1) conceptual ambiguities frustrating a fuller and more useful understanding of the very concepts of “privacy” and “confidentiality;” (2) the use and abuse, morally speaking, of electronic mail and electronic bulletin boards; and (3) the development and sale of databases, particularly as the latter affect the lives and well-being of private citizens. Throughout, the principal constituencies needing to be concerned by problems of privacy and confidentiality were identified as ordinary U.S. citizens, including the economically disadvantaged and uneducated; educational institutions; private corporations; and government agencies. Across all constituencies, database owners, publishers and users, as well as software developers and system managers bear a special relation to the problems. However, problems of privacy and confidentiality affect all Americans.

Go to: Seeking a Clearer Understanding of “Privacy” and “Confidentiality”

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