Page 86 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

72 PRIVACY IN A CYBER AGE

a given space at one point in time. The information collected is typically of
low sensitivity; it merely reveals the kind of information people readily dis-
play in public; whether they dress up or down, for example. And as a rule
the information is not stored or collected with other information about the
same person.
On the other end of the spectrum is New York City’s “Domain Awareness
System,” developed by Microsoft. It collects information from many differ-
ent CCTVs across the city as well as other sources, such as speed cameras
and radiation monitors, and possibly in the future of cell phone locators. It
stores this information, combines it with other information, and analyzes
it. The information originally collected in both situations is the same; it
is the great difference in the level of cybernation that makes the second
situation much more of a threat to privacy than the first.
Finally, a fourth variable, accountability, deserves consideration. This
variable measures the extent to which those who collect information have
erected barriers to access by unauthorized parties and are subjected to
supervision and oversight to ensure that they use the information legally
and legitimately. These measures include firewalls, passwords, audit trails,
supervisors, inspectors general, and congressional committees.
All accountability measures limit cybernation, not collection. Some
entirely prevent agents from gaining access to personal information, oth-
ers limit storage of information by regularly deleting it or stashing it away
where it can only be accessed with additional judicial scrutiny, and still
others minimize or de-identify information so that it cannot be analyzed
as efficiently. Less cybernation occurs when accountability measures are
robust. (Ideally, accountability mechanisms would be built into the design
of future technologies.) And where cybernation is limited, fewer privacy
violations will occur even if the volume and sensitivity of information
collected by a given actor are considerable. Conversely, if databases lack
accountability mechanisms, the risk of privacy violations will be high even
when the information under consideration is of lower volume and sensi-
tivity, because of the potential to draw inferences through unauthorized
secondary usages.

G. Conclusion

“Privacy protection” has long meant according special protection to private
spaces such as houses, cars, and containers. We have seen that this association
has been criticized, for good reason, as both over- and underprotecting pri-
vacy on various grounds. An earlier attempt to fashion privacy as based on
other foundations than the barriers of private spaces, in Katz, largely failed.
This chapter suggests that using the volume of information collected, its