Protecting Public Anonymity
Issues in Science and Technology (10/04) Vol. 21, No. 1, P. 83; Morgan, M. Granger; Newton, Elaine
Technologies are emerging that could lead to a society where everyone can be tracked and identified, and thus abusively controlled both socially and politically. Preventing this scenario involves efforts among law and IT professionals, civil libertarians, and the general public to bolster privacy rights and public anonymity. Carnegie Mellon University's M. Granger Morton and Elaine Newton frown upon the legal authorization of detailed shopping center surveillance data, because its benefits to marketers and law enforcement would be outweighed by the potential for exploitation by criminals, politicians, and others. The authors posit that potentially negative social consequences are more likely to be reduced or avoided if system designers carefully consider the effects of alternative designs before they make their choices, and they offer a preliminary list of design principles that include: Explicit identification of a system's intended functions; the collection of only as many measures necessary to carry out those functions; the use of measures that integrate information over space and time and are appropriate for the task's function and security level; provision of opt-in or opt-out to affected parties; and minimization of data sharing. Suggested measures to promote the growth of effective system design standards while avoiding restrictive government regulation include public anonymity-protective performance standards instituted as best practices, demonstrated compliance with such standards via certification, establishing such certification as a prerequisite for system acquisition by public and private parties, and setting up a legal liability framework for companies whose products violate privacy and data-sharing regulations. Morton and Newton think a new high-level commission akin to the one set up by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to shape the Privacy Act of 1974 should be established to build a legal framework to defend privacy and public anonymity while balancing them against other legitimate social goals. Concurrent with this would be the development and distribution of a set of best professional practices for privacy- and anonymity-strong system design by IT professional communities such as the ACM.
Elaine Newton est doctorante à Carnegie Mellon University
Visitez sa page pour d'autres documents (en anglais) :
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/enewton/
http://www.google.be/search?q=protecting+public+anonimity