When
properly understood, privacy rules essential, experts say
In the digital age in which we live, monitoring, security
breaches and hacks of sensitive data are all too common. It has been argued
that privacy has no place in this big data environment and anything we put
online can, and probably will, be seen by prying eyes.
In a new paper, a noted Washington University in St. Louis
privacy law expert makes the case that when properly understood, privacy rules
will be an essential and valuable part of our digital future.
"If, as a society, we are going to retain the human values
on which our political, social and economic institutions have been built, we
must be able to feel secure in our digital lives," said Neil M. Richards,
JD, professor of law.
Richards is an internationally recognized authority on privacy
and information law.
He is co-author of a new paper "Big Data and the Future for
Privacy," with Jonathan H. King, a 2013 graduate of the Washington
University Intellectual Property & Technology Law LLM program and an executive
at CenturyLink, a global network and cloud services provider.
In the paper, Richards and King makes three basic points about
the future of privacy.
"First, we need to think differently about privacy,"
Richards said.
"Privacy is not merely about keeping secrets, but about the
rules we use to regulate information, which is, and always has been, in
intermediate states between totally secret and known to all," he said.
"Privacy rules are information rules, and in an information society, information
rules are inevitable."
Second, the scholars suggest that privacy protections are a
means to safeguard other values. They examine several such values that privacy
rules should protect, including identity, equality, security and trust.
Third, mindful of the complexity of our digital society,
Richards and King suggest how meaningful privacy protection can be achieved in
a big data future, through a combination of traditional regulation,
"soft" regulation and the development of big data ethics.
"Our claim is that the shiny future asserted as inevitable
by the pro-innovation, anti-privacy rhetoric turns out to be both shallow and
unappealing on closer analysis," Richards said. "We believe there is
an alternative future, where we can have the benefits of data science while at
the same time preserving meaningful legal and ethical protections for data
subjects."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided
by Washington University in St.
Louis. The original article was written by Neil Schoenherr. Note:
Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
Neil M. Richards, Jonathan H. King. Big Data and the Future
for Privacy. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014; DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2512069
Cite This Page:
Washington University in St. Louis. "The right to privacy
in a big data world: When properly understood, privacy rules essential, experts
say." Science Daily,
25 October 2014.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141025152547.htm>.