- From: Haakon Bratsberg <haakon.bratsberg@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:14:53 +0100
- To: Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org>
- Cc: Nicholas Doty <npdoty@w3.org>, public-tracking@w3.org, John Simpson <john@consumerwatchdog.org>, "Aleecia M. McDonald" <aleecia@aleecia.com>, Matthias Schunter <mts@zurich.ibm.com>, Thomas Roessler <tlr@w3.org>
I think the proposed express the underlying concerns about tracking and privacy. Some comments: - Do not forget Samuel D. Warren who co-authored "The Right to Privacy" - Agree that Alan Westin's book "Privacy and Freedom" from 1967 was the start of the next round of privacy discussion that ended up with legislation for example in Norway. - But; the thinking around privacy as evolved since late 60s/early 70s. We should probably include a more recent, acknowledged definition. I'll think about it, but no good candidate spring to mind that is globally acceptable. - I'm probably a biased Norwegian, but I kind of like the definition proposed by Selmer and Blekeli in 1977: Privacy is the legitimate interest of a person to control the collection and use of information that relates to him/herself. (Data og personvern" p. 21, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo). Haakon On Feb 23, 2012, at 10:48 PM, Rigo Wenning wrote: > Here is my proposed text: > > ================================== > Privacy as first mentioned by Louis Brandeis in 1890 is the right to be left > alone. But Privacy is also the term used by Alan Westin in 1967. And here, > Privacy is about large dossiers about people in computers that are used to > make decisions about those people. And this triggered a discussion about the > autonomy of decision making of the individual in a completely computerized > society that is ongoing since then. And this Specification is a very part of > that discussion. > > The fear is that by having large profiles about people, identified or > identifiable, there may be two phenomena: > > 1/ Direct influence > The government may have access to such profiles and gain too much information > about citizens. This information is then used to influence opinions in a > certain direction. But it could also be used to identify and target the > leading intellectuals and their networks. > > 2/ Self constraining and self censoring > > Every one of us is trying to maintain a certain image to the outside world. > The success of social networks shows that many people really care about their > image. But everyone of us has also sides that do not match the image we try to > convey. This may be a disease, this may be a certain part of our character. If > we do not know, what others know about us, how could we forge our image? Many > people assume that the outside world knows more than it really knows. Once > people realize what the big unknown may know about them, they start to worry. > This leads to a self constraint behavior to avoid further collection. Less > searches. Searches only for non sensitive things. Having AIDS a person > wouldn't look at AIDS pages anymore. People would not look at controversial > information and opinions anymore. The fear has hampered the opinion building. > So not the profile itself created the bad effect, but the imagination about > what those profiles could contain and be used for. With the addition of some > high publicity cases and some running urban myths, e.g. accidentally being on > a no-fly list or the like, the fear establishes itself in large portions of > society. And this has the potential is to seriously hamper the opinion > building that is so crucial for a democratic society. > ================================== > > Hope this explains why I sometimes say: We kill our democracies by accident. > Because I don't think people creating those large profiles today are really > aware of the psychological dangers they create. It's all only about > advertisement, isn't it? It isn't actually, so let's work that it is again. > > I think this text would also benefit from a review by a native english > speaker. > > Rigo > > On Saturday 11 February 2012 19:12:40 Nicholas Doty wrote: >> On Feb 11, 2012, at 12:57 PM, Rigo Wenning wrote: >>> 2/ While the consumer-protection aspect is clearly stated, the >>> protection of democracy aspect is not clear and is hidden in the "human >>> rights" statement. >> Rigo, do you want to suggest some text to explain the democratic concern? >> >> From my part, some text we came up with in one of our small groups in > Brussels may be relevant to this enumeration/elaboration of privacy concerns: >>> * Experiencing targeting based on data about me from unexpected sources. >>> (In many cases, large profiles of data about me or people like me >>> already exist, compiled from either online or offline data.) * >>> Retention of browsing history data by unexpected sources. >> >> Thanks, >> Nick
Received on Friday, 24 February 2012 13:15:34 UTC