The digital citizen: are we getting privacy the wrong way round?

O'Hara, Kieron (2013) The digital citizen: are we getting privacy the wrong way round? IEEE Internet Computing, 17 (4), 89-92. (doi:10.1109/MIC.2013.62).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Individualists, communitarians, and technological determinists agree that privacy's benefits accrue to individuals, and that its costs (in terms of less security or efficiency) fall on society. As such, it is the individual's choice to give privacy away. However, privacy does benefit wider society in important respects, and so this consensus is flawed.

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Published date: July 2013

Additional Information: The Mill test of whether coercion is justified to prevent harm — has become increasingly influential as freedom has become a prized political good. It defines an area of private life in which you have, in the classic account of the US jurists Warren and Brandeis, the right to be let alone. This presents an irony for the digital citizen because applying the Mill test specifies a space for decisional privacy in a world where people often decide to sacrifice their informational privacy for free or useful services — despite the fact that many commentators believe that to do so is hardly wise or right at all.

Keywords: privacy, communitarianism, liberalism, social networking, profiling

Organisations: Web & Internet Science