Privacy is an essentially contested concept: a multi-dimensional analytic for mapping privacy.
The meaning of privacy has been much disputed throughout its history in response to wave after wave of new technological capabilities and social configurations. The current round of disputes over privacy fuelled by data science has been a cause of despair for many commentators and a death knell for privacy itself for others. We argue that privacy's disputes are neither an accidental feature of the concept nor a lamentable condition of its applicability. Privacy is essentially contested. Because it is, privacy is transformable according to changing technological and social conditions. To make productive use of privacy's essential contestability, we argue for a new approach to privacy research and practical design, focused on the development of conceptual analytics that facilitate dissecting privacy's multiple uses across multiple contexts.This article is part of the themed issue 'The ethical impact of data science'.
University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, and Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA dmulligan@berkeley.edu.
Deirdre K
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2693-8454
DK
Mulligan
University of Oregon, Center for Cyber Security and Privacy, and Department of Philosophy, Eugene, OR 97403, USA.
Colin
C
Koopman
University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, and Center for Technology, Society & Policy, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Nick
N
Doty
D007254:Information Science / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D018907:Privacy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence
data science; design; privacy; privacy analytic; privacy by design; values in design