Stanford University Press Blog

Privacy in its Various Contexts

What kinds of things are you comfortable sharing? Your “Interests” and favorite “Quotations” on Facebook – many people are. Your professional profile on Linkedin – absolutely. Your personal financial documents and bill statements – maybe not.  Ultimately, everyone has a different take on what they think should be private.

With all the different possible circumstances, perhaps we shouldn’t base our definition of privacy on the convention arguments between private and public; personal and collective; protected and unprotected.  But how should we be approaching the idea of privacy? In this day and age when the advent of the internet has allowed unthinkable expanses of information to be available at the click of a mouse, how should privacy be defined -- from both political and moral standpoints?

 In an interview with Concurring Opinions, Helen Nissenbaum, author of Privacy in Context, Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life, sheds light on this very question. Nissenbaum posits that instead of focusing on a public/private distinction, we should focus on what particular constraints should be placed on any information in any particular situation. So rather than place info into one of two categories, we would decide how much regulation, if any, that particular information should have in context.

So, when we join online communities like Facebook and Linkedin, we allow a certain amount of personal information to be accessible to others and we decide just how much we’d like them to see. However, when we sign up for online banking, we expect that all of the information we enter is protected and unseen by others. It’s not a simple matter of private vs. public anymore. With so many possible ways to share information, it seems like a two-category system just won’t work. While the amount of information flowing through our world increases daily, a look at privacy in its various contexts may be just what we need to sort it out.

Demands for Net Neutrality: What have we been missing?

Most of us like to think that we have control over what we view on the internet, but as recent controversies involving broadband providers and internet search engines suggest -- perhaps we don’t. In an Op-Ed in the Short Stack column of The Washington Post, Dawn Nunziato addresses the issue of protecting free speech in the internet age. Nunziato, author of Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age, draws on her knowledge and research of First Amendment violations on the internet to uncover how internet providers and websites are limiting users’ freedom.

Nunziato explains that the FCC is now working toward requiring broadband providers to be neutral parties within internet communications. But why should the FCC have to take such measures?  Aren’t we already free to express and view whatever we want on the internet? After all, that’s what blogs like this one are for.  But according to Nunziato, not everyone is enjoying the same rights.

In both her book and the Op-Ed, Nunziato references occasions where companies like Verizon, Google, and Comcast have limited the actions of certain users. “In 2007, for example, Comcast blocked access to legal peer-to-peer file-sharing applications and then withheld information from its users (and the FCC) about its actions.” How is it that these sorts of violations to our right to free speech have been going on right before our eyes? 

Nunziato asserts, “The FCC and the EU should act now to require that the handful of powerful companies who serve as the gatekeepers for Internet expression fulfill their obligations to the public free of discrimination and censorship to protect our free speech interests in the digital age.” 

So the next time you’re on the internet, ask yourself: Just how much have I been missing?