Page 44 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

MORE COHERENT, LESS SUBJECTIVE, AND OPERATIONAL 29

volume, so is the number of collection methods a crude but useable mea-
sure of bandwidth. This is the case because some surveillance methods are
able to gather many more types of information about an individual than
others; for instance, taping phone conversations (which captures the com-
plete content of a call and thereby potentially includes many kinds of infor-
mation) is a much broader bandwidth method than the collection of phone
records (which captures who called whom, at what time, and from where).
For traffic control purposes, it is possible to measure the speed at which a
vehicle travels in public places without taking a picture of the person sit-
ting next to the driver in the front seat. (Incidentally, for this reason, speed
cameras are set lower, at the level of license plates.) A more sophisticated
measure of bandwidth could take these differences into account.

ii. Sensitivity
The concept that some kinds of information are more sensitive than others
has been often articulated by privacy scholars and operationalized by law-
makers, albeit using a variety of terms. Additional terms that have been
applied include “intimate information” or “revealing information,” and
some scholars have defined them in terms of the level of risk or the extent
of harm to one’s privacy. 45
Two levels of distinction between types of information must take place
in order to enable the development of a nuanced understanding of sensi-
tive information. The first level of distinction is very basic; it establishes the
realm of information to be considered, distinguishing personal informa-
tion from other forms of information that either do not deal with persons
or have been de-identified or anonymized in ways that are presumed to be
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irreversible. (Paul M. Schwartz and Daniel J. Solove note that “numerous
federal statutes turn on [the distinction between personally-identifiable
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information (PII) and other forms of information].” ) Briefly, all nonper-
sonal information is inherently not sensitive. Revealing the amount of rain
that falls in Spain, for example, endangers no one’s privacy. The issue of
sensitivity concerns the second level of distinction, which distinguishes
among the various kinds of personal information.
Quite a few leading privacy advocates rail against all collection of per-
sonal information by the government. In response to the introduction of
airport screening gates to prevent skyjackings, an American Civil Liber-
ties Union (ACLU) staff counsel wrote that “the new [general] passenger
screening regulations are completely inconsistent with the values safe-
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guarded by the fourth amendment.” The ACLU has also opposed speed
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cameras at traffic intersections, calling them “extreme,” as well as the use
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of cookies on federal government websites —without which many Inter-
net activities might well be impossible. (In fact, the ACLU website itself