Chapter5:

Privacy
Ethics for the Information Age
Forth Edition
by
Michael J. Quinn

Copyright Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

Chapter Overview

Introduction
Perspectives on privacy
Disclosing information
Ways information becomes public
U.S. legislation
Public records
Covert government surveillance
U.S. legislation authorizing wiretapping
Data mining
Identity theft
Encryption

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Introduction
Information collection, exchange,
combination, and distribution easier than
ever
More information access less privacy
Trade-offs
Privacy vs. need for credentials
Privacy vs. desire for free expression
Privacy vs. safety / security
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Defining Privacy
Privacy related to notion of access
Access
Physical proximity to a person
Knowledge about a person

Edmund Byrne: Privacy is a zone of

inaccessibility
Edward Bloustein: Privacy violations are an
affront to human dignity
Too much individual privacy can harm society
Ex: a group that facilitates business among its
members, not helping the whole siciety.

Where to draw the line?

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Harms of Privacy
Cover for illegal or immoral activities
Burden on the nuclear family
To care for all its members

Hidden dysfunctional families

We dont know about pain caused by family
violence because of privacy.

Ignored people on societys fringes

Poor, mentally ill people.
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Benefits of Privacy

Individual growth (maturity)

Individual responsibility
Freedom to be yourself
Intellectual and spiritual growth
Shut out the rest of the world to focus our
thoughts without interruption.

Development of loving, trusting, caring,

intimate relationships
Close relationships
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Is There a Natural Right to Privacy?

Morton Levine: Property rights (Home)
Privacy rights
I own my home, no body should interfere

Privacy is a prudential right

Ex: Telemarketing and the Do Not Call Registry

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Privacy and Trust

Modern life more private
In the past there was greater emphasis on community

Challenge: living among strangers

We know little about neighbors
BUT we must trust people to some extent
Ex: taxi driver, teachers, bank loans

Remedy: establishing reputations

Ordeal, such as lie detector test or drug test
Credential, such as drivers license, key, ID card,
college degree

Establishing reputation is done at the cost of

reducing privacy
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Disclosing Information
Public record: information for public access
Ex: birth certificates

Public information: information revealed to an

organization that has right to share it
Ex: Telephone directory

Personal information: undisclosed information

Ex: religion, wealth

Types of disclosures
Voluntary :
Involuntary : body and luggage search at airport
Statutory : Record of arrests and convicted persons
Cameras on streets
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Ways Information Becomes Public

Rewards or loyalty programs (shopping cards)
Body scanners (to choose clothes that fit you)
New Automobile comes with black boxes like
airplanes
Track locations of cell phones
RFIDs (Tags on products aspirin or pants)
Implanted chips (RFID tag contains name and
address for patients and children)
Cookies (a file on your PC placed by a web server to
monitor your visit to a Web site
Spyware: a program to monitor your surfing on the net
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Public Records
Examples of Public Records
Census records
Many ways to use these records

Internal Revenue Service records

Income, tax, assets, organization you give
charity for, medical expanses, etc.

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Census Records
Census required to ensure every state has
fair representation
Number of questions steadily rising
Sometimes Census Bureau has broken
confidentiality requirement
World War I: provided names and addresses
of young draft resistors
World War II: used info. About JapaneseAmericans
Round them up and send them to arrest camps.
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Internal Revenue Service Records

Much personal information on tax forms
Some IRS employees have misused
access to IRS records
IRS has also misplaced tapes and
diskettes containing records

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Code of Fair Information Practices

Has the following principles:
No secret databases
People should have access to personal
information in federal databases
Organizations cannot change how
information is used without consent
People should be able to correct or amend
records
Database owners are responsible for
reliability of data and must prevent misuse
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Wiretaps and Bugs

Wiretaps: relates to interception of
telephone conversations
Bugs are hidden microphones used for
surveillance
Wiretapping and bugs are not legal
FBI continues secret wiretapping
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Data Mining
Data mining
Searching for patterns or relationships in one or more
databases
Way to generate new information by combining facts
found in multiple transactions
Way to predict future events

Secondary use: information collected for one

purpose used for another purpose
Ex: Collaborative filtering is used to predict future
preference of a person comparing to other people
transactions (renting from a video store)

Information about customers is a valuable

commodity
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Data Mining Examples

Marketplace: Households
Lotus Development Corporation developed
CD with information on 120 million
Americans
Planned to sell CD to small businesses
that wanted to create mailing lists based
on various criteria, such as household
income
More than 30,000 consumers complained
to Lotus about invasion of privacy
Lotus dropped plans to sell CD
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Data Mining Examples

IRS Audits
IRS uses computer matching and data
mining to look for possible income tax fraud
Computer matching: matching tax form
information (filled by a person) with
information provided by employers, banks,
etc.
Data mining: searching through forms to
detect those that appear most likely to have
errors resulting in underpayment of taxes
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Data Mining Examples

Syndromic Surveillance System
Created by New York City
Analyzes more than 50,000 pieces of
information every day
911 calls
Visits to emergency rooms
Purchases of prescription drugs

Looks for patterns that might indicate an

epidemic, bioterrorism, or an
environmental problem
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Data Mining Examples

Telecommunications Records Database

Created by National Security Agency after 9/11

Contains phone call records of tens of millions of Americans
NSA analyzing calling patterns to detect terrorist networks
Phone records voluntarily provided by several major
telecommunications companies
USA Today revealed existence of database in May 2006
Several dozen class-action lawsuits filed
August 2006: Federal judge in Detroit ruled program illegal
and unconstitutional
July 2007: U.S. Court of Appeals overturned ruling, saying
plaintiffs did not have standing to bring suit forward
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Ownership of Transaction Information

Who controls transaction information?
Buyer?
Seller?
Both?

Opt-in: consumer must explicitly give

permission for the organization to share
info with another organization.
Preferred by privacy advocates

Opt-out: consumer must explicitly forbid an

organization from sharing info
Preferred by direct marketing
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Identity Theft : Background

Identity theft: misuse of another persons
identity to take actions permitted to the owner
Credit card fraud #1 type of identity theft
Ease of opening financial accounts contributes
to problem
Because information brokers on the Web are selling
IDs (license, SSN, Credit cards)

10 million victims in 2004 alone

Average loss: $5,000 per victim
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Gaining Access to Information

Mailboxes
Lost or stolen wallets
Dumpster diving (looking old bills, bank
statements, etc)
Shoulder surfing (while people are filling forms)
Skimmers (wedges)
Credit card readers attached to ATM machines

Phishing
Gathering financial info through spam asking you to visit
a web site and the update personal info (fake Paypal)
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Encryption
Process of transforming a message in
order to conceal its meaning
Valuable tool for maintaining privacy

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