Privacy Concerns in Modern Society

Chapter 5: Information Privacy

• Information Technology Erodes Privacy: Computers, databases, and the internet facilitate increasingly sophisticated information collection, exchange, combination, and distribution. This makes accessing information about others, including strangers, easier than ever. A significant figure concerning this topic is Scott McNealy, who said "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

• Themes of This Chapter:

  • What is privacy, and do we have a natural right to it?
  • There's a tension between privacy rights and knowing enough about others for trust.
  • How organizations collect information about our daily activities.
  • How data mining creates individual profiles.
  • How marketers use consumer profiles.
  • How data mining techniques are applied in politics.

• Defining Privacy: Privacy is tied to the concept of access. It encompasses physical proximity and knowledge about a person. Privacy is often viewed as a "zone of inaccessibility"; violating it is an affront to individual dignity. However, too much privacy can be harmful to society.

• Harms of Privacy: Privacy can mask illegal or immoral activities, burden families, mask dysfunctional families, and allow for the marginalization of marginalized people in society.

• Benefits of Privacy: Necessary for personal growth, promotes individual responsibility, recognizes personal freedom, enables creativity and intellectual/spiritual development, and fosters loving relationships.

• Natural Right to Privacy (Argument in Favor):

  • Originated from property rights: Historically, the home was considered a sanctuary.
  • Coercive Acts (1773) led to the 3rd Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects the right to privacy in homes.
  • Warren and Brandeis' "The Right to Privacy" (1890) defined privacy as the right to be left alone, now recognized in American courts.

• Natural Right to Privacy (Argument Against): (Judith Jarvis Thomson)

  • There's difficulty in defining privacy.
  • Defining it as the right to be left alone is too narrow (not encompassing covert spying) or too broad (including assault).
  • Violating privacy often involves violating other rights; therefore, precise definition isn't necessary.

• Conclusion on Natural Right to Privacy: Privacy isn't a natural right, but a prudential one with benefits to society. Rational people recognize it.

• Privacy and Trust: Modern life is possibly more private than life in prior centuries because most people aren't in close, extended families, and cars and TV enable more solitude, contrasted with the past where communities often lived together. Establishing reputations is done in exchange for less privacy. Methods of establishing reputations include ordeals (lie detector tests) and credentials (driver's license).

• Case Study: New Parents: The Sullivans purchase a system that monitors their nanny through a laptop camera in their family room without informing the nanny. This highlights ethical issues regarding employee privacy.

• Rule Utilitarian Evaluation: If everyone monitored nannies, there would be negative consequences (e.g., nanny stress, child abuse decrease, job satisfaction in child-care decrease) that outweigh any potential benefits, so the action was deemed wrong.

• Social Contract Theory Evaluation: Privacy in the home is a reasonable tenet of society. The nanny has a reasonable expectation of privacy in her interactions with the baby in the home; thus, the Sullivans' action of secretly monitoring the nanny is judged ethically wrong because it violates that privacy.

• Kantian Evaluation: If every employer secretly monitored employees who worked with vulnerable people, the idea of privacy would no longer exist; this rule would not hold. Therefore, according to Kantian ethics, the Sullivans' action is judged to be wrong.

• Virtue Ethics Evaluation: Parents are responsible for their children's well-being.

• Information Disclosures (5.3): • Public Records: Information about incidents and actions reported to a government agency (e.g., birth certificates, marriage records, deeds to property). Computerized databases and the internet facilitate easy access to public records. • Information Held by Private Organizations: Credit card purchases, purchases with loyalty cards, voluntary disclosures, and posts to social media.

• Data Gathering and Privacy Implications: • Facebook Tags: Labels identifying people in photos, involving facial recognition, potentially increasing risk of improper tagging. • Enhanced 911 Services: Cell phone companies track location data, raising concerns about data sharing. • Rewards or Loyalty Programs: Data of customer buying habits used by businesses for personalized service. • Body Scanners: 3-D body scanners gather individual body measurements, which can be used for clothing recommendations and custom-made clothing. • RFID Tags: Radio Frequency Identification tags. Contain more information than bar codes, are easily scanned, and become tracking devices. • Implanted Chips: Microchips with personal information, implanted in animals (in Taiwan, for example). Has possibilities for use with humans. • Mobile Apps: Many apps collect location data and sell it to advertisers. • Facebook Login: Allows login to websites/apps with Facebook credentials.

• (5.4) Data Mining: • Searching records in databases to find patterns and relationships. • Creating profiles of individuals based on data mining.

  • Google's Personalized Search: Tracks search queries and visited webpages, learns user interests for returning more relevant results. Data is also used by retailers to target specific ads (direct marketing). • Limiting Information Google Saves: Google allows users to limit the information collected.

  • Collaborative Filtering: Analyzing preferences of a large group of people to predict the preference of an individual (e.g., purchases, movies). Used by movie sites and retailers.

  • Ownership of Transaction Information: Who controls transaction information (buyer, seller or both)? Opt-in (permission required) versus opt-out (consent presumed until withdrawn).

  • "Target"-ing Pregnant Women: Target used data mining of customer shopping to predict pregnancy in second trimester, targeting marketing to those customers.

  • Credit Reports: Credit bureaus track assets, debts, and payment history. Credit reports are sold to banks, credit card companies, etc. for borrowing money decisions. This allows choices and can affect employment options.

  • Targeted Direct Mail: Businesses utilize customized mailing lists based on information collected online and offline. Shopping habits might be used to predict consumer demographics and lifestyles, used for direct-mail targeting and pricing.

  • Microtargeting: Political campaigning uses voter demographics (registration, voting frequency, consumer data, locations) to target specific voters (e.g., home visits, emails, text messages).

  • Social Network Analysis: Information from social networks is collected to inform decisions. Businesses may provide special promotions to influencers.

  • Controlling Your Facebook Info: Options for controlling public visibility (friends' lists, future posts). Users may choose what information to share from their profiles to minimize potential public awareness from the sharing of this information.

  • Additional controls may include choices to limit sharing of location history, advertising based on preferences or information about themselves, and additional controls for their posts. • Netflix Prize: A $1 million contest to develop better movie recommendation algorithms. Researchers discovered that customer data in this case was not truly anonymous, despite efforts to mask personal information.

  • AOL Search Dataset: A dataset of AOL user search queries was posted publicly, revealing personal search data of 650,000 users. This led to a public outcry.

• (5.5) Examples of Consumer or Political Backlash: • Lotus Development Corporation: Lotus had plans to sell a CD of information about 120 million Americans. This prompted consumer complaints about an invasion of privacy, resulting in abandoning the endeavor.

  • Facebook Beacon: A targeted advertising device that posted information about user purchases to their friends' newsfeeds. The practice was criticized, led to a campaign by MoveOn.org, and Facebook changed to an opt-in policy.

  • Malls Track Shoppers' Cell Phones: Concerns about the privacy of shoppers' movement in malls when using cell phones. Small signs informed shoppers about the study.

  • iPhone Apps Upload Address Books: An app used the ability to upload an iPhone’s contacts without permission. After an outcry, this was corrected.

  • Instagram's Proposed Terms of Service Change: Terms changes for using photos for advertising and in ads without permission were met with legal and consumer criticism and the original terms were restored.

  • Cambridge Analytica: Collected personal information about 87 million people from publicly available Facebook information without permission. Campaign managers attempted to exploit the dataset for the benefit of specific politicians. Data was misused without the appropriate permission in this case.

• Summary: Modern information technology makes information much easier to collect, and there are competing interests regarding privacy (user desire and company profit). Public records are generally considered part of the public domain. Sharing personal information often comes with some expectation that the receiver will use the information for the purpose disclosed. Companies sometimes push the boundaries of personal information use.