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Abstract:
Recent media revelations have demonstrated the extent of third-party tracking and monitoring online, much of it spurred by data aggregation, profiling, and selective targeting. How to protect privacy online is a frequent question in public discourse and has reignited the interest of government actors. In the United States, notice-and-consent remains the fallback approach in online privacy policies, despite its weaknesses. This essay presents an alternative approach, rooted in the theory of contextual integrity. Proposals to improve and fortify notice-and-consent, such as clearer privacy policies and fairer information practices, will not overcome a fundamental flaw in the model, namely, its assumption that individuals can understand all facts relevant to true choice at the moment of pair-wise contracting between individuals and data gatherers. Instead, we must articulate a backdrop of context-specific substantive norms that constrain what information websites can collect, with whom they can share it, and under what conditions it can be shared. In developing this approach, the paper warns that the current bias in conceiving of the Net as a predominantly commercial enterprise seriously limits the privacy agenda.
The year 2010 was big for online privacy.1 Reports of privacy gaffes, such as those associated with Google Buzz and Facebook' s fickle privacy policies, graced frontpages of prominent news media. In its series "On What They Know, " The Wall Street Journal aimed a spotlight at the rampant tracking of individuals for behavioral advertising and other reasons.2 The U.S. government, via the Federal Trade Commission (ftc)3 and the Department of Commerce,4 released two reports in December 2010 depicting the Net as a place where every step is watched and every click recorded by data-hungry private and governmental entities, and where every response is coveted by attention-seekers and influence-peddlers.5
This article explores present-day concerns about online privacy, but in order to understand and explain on-the-ground activities and the anxieties they stir, it identifies the principles, forces, and values behind them. It considers why privacy online has been vexing, even beyond general concerns over privacy why predominant approaches have persisted despite their limited results ; and why they should be challenged. Finally, the essay lays out an alternative approach to addressing the problem of privacy online based on the theory of privacy as contextual integrity. This...