Privacy is not the enemy...

I attended the Oxford Institute event 'Anonymity, Privacy and Open Data' yesterday, notable amongst other things for Professor Ross Anderson's systematic and incredibly powerful destruction of the argument in favour of 'anonymisation' as a protection for privacy. It was a remarkable event, with excellent speakers talking on the most pertinent subjects of the day in terms of data privacy: compelling stuff, and good to see so many interesting people working in the privacy and related fields.

And yet, at one point, one of the audience asked a question about whether a group like this was not too narrow, and that by focussing on privacy we were losing sight of other 'goods' - he was thinking particularly of medical goods, as 'privacy' was seen as threatening the possibility of sharing medical data. I understood his point - and I understood his difficulty, as he was in a room to a great extent full of people interested in privacy (hardly surprising given the title of the event). Privacy advocates are often used to the reverse position - trying to 'shout out' about privacy to a room full of avid data-sharers or supporters of business innovation above all things. A lot of antagonism. A lot of feelings about being 'threatened'. And yet I believe that many of those threatened are missing the point about privacy. Just as Guido Fawkes is wrong to characterise privacy just as a 'euphemism for censorship' (as I've written about before) and Paul McMullan is wrong to suggest that 'privacy is for paedos', the idea that privacy is the 'enemy' of so many things is fundamentally misconceived. To a great extent the opposite is true.

Privacy is not the enemy of free expression - indeed, as Jo Glanville of Index on Censorship has argued, privacy is essential for free expression. Without the protection provided by privacy, people are shackled by the risk that their enemies, those that would censor them, arrest them or worse, can uncover their indentures, find them and do their worst. Without privacy, there is no free expression.

Privacy is not the enemy of 'publicness' - in a similar way, to be truly 'public', people need to be able to protect what is private. They need to be able to have at least some control over what they share, what they put into the public. If they have no privacy, no control at all, how can they know what to share?

Privacy is not the enemy of law enforcement - privacy is sometimes suggested to be a tool for criminals, something behind which they can hide behind. The old argument that 'if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear' has been exposed as a fallacy many times - perhaps most notably by Daniel Solove (e.g. here), but there is another side to the argument. Criminals will use whatever tools you present them with. If you provide an internet with privacy and anonymity they'll use that privacy and anonymity - but if you provide an internet without privacy, they'll exploit that lack of privacy. Many scams related to identity theft are based around taking advantage of that lack of privacy. It would perhaps be stretching a point to suggest that privacy is a friend to law enforcement - but it is as much of an enemy to criminals as it is to law enforcement agencies. Properly implemented privacy can protect us from crime.

Privacy is not the enemy of security - in a similar way, terrorists and those behind what's loosely described as cyberwarfare will exploit whatever environment they are provided with. If Western Law enforcement agencies demand that social networks install 'back doors' to allow them to pursue terrorists and criminals, you can be sure that those back doors will be used by their enemies - terrorists, criminals, agents of enemy states and so forth. This last week has seen Privacy International launch their 'Big Brother Inc' database, revealing the extent to which surveillance products developed in the West are being sold to despotic and oppressive regimes. It's systematic, and understandable. Surveillance is a double-edged sword - and privacy is a shield which faces many ways (to stretch a metaphor beyond its limits!). Proper privacy protection works against the 'bad guys' as well as the 'good'. It's a supporter of security, not an enemy.

Privacy is not the enemy of business - though it is the enemy of certain particular business models, just as 'health' is the enemy of the tobacco industry. Ultimately, privacy is a supporter of business, because better privacy increases trust, and trust helps business. Governments need to start to be clear that this is the case - and that by undermining privacy (for example though the oppressive and disproportionate attempts to control copyright infringement) they undermine trust, both in businesses and in themselves as governments. Privacy is certainly a challenge to business - but that's merely reflective of the challenges that all businesses face (and should face) in developing businesses that people want to use and are willing to pay money for.

Privacy is not the enemy of open data - indeed, precisely the opposite. First of all, privacy should make it clear which data should be shared, and how. 'Public' data doesn't infringe privacy - from bus timetables to meteorological records, from public accounts to parliamentary voting records. Personal data is just that - personal - and sharing it should happen with real consent. When is that consent likely to be given? When people trust that their data will be used appropriately. When will they trust? When privacy is generally in place. Better privacy means better data sharing.


All this is without addressing the question of whether (and to what extent) privacy is a fundamental right. I won't get into that here - it's a philosophical question and one of great interest to me, but the arguments in favour of privacy are highly practical as well as philosophical. Privacy shouldn't be the enemy - it should be seen as something positive, something that can assist and support. Privacy builds trust, and trust helps everyone.

Opting out of Street View....

Nearly 250,000 Germans have 'opted out' of having their homes visible when Google's Street View comes online, though Andreas Türk, Product Manager for Street View in Germany, has admitted that some of those homes will still be visible when the service comes online, which will be some time in the near future, as the process is complex and not all instructions were clear. His blog here provides the explanations.

It's an interesting figure - is 250,000 (or, to be more precise, 244,237) a large number? As Andreas Türk says, it amounts to 2.89% of those who could have objected, and the argument can be made both ways. Google might argue that it means that the vast, vast majority don't object to Street View, so their service has some kind of overall 'acceptance' or even 'support' by the populace. Privacy advocates might say the converse - in absolute terms, 250,000 is a LOT of people. If you had 250,000 people marching on the streets with banners saying 'NO TO STREET VIEW' it would make headline news, certainly in Germany, and probably throughout Europe.

Both sides have a point: 2.89% isn't a very large proportion, but 250,000 is a lot of people, and when you look closer at the process I suspect that the privacy advocates have a stronger position. Given that the opt-out required an active process (and Google say that 2/3 of those who objected used their own online tool to do so) it does suggest that quite a lot of people care about this. If the reverse system had been in place - and you had to actively choose to HAVE your home 'unblurred' on Street View, what kind of figures would you get? Would more than 250,000 have gone through a process to make their houses visible? I doubt it....

...and what of the rest of us? Germans got a choice because their government made a point about it, and demanded that Google give them the choice before the service went active. As the BBC reports, other governments have made other kinds of objections, but none have been given the choice that the Germans have had. As I've blogged before, Germany has a pretty active privacy lobby, so it's not surprising that they are the country that has taken this step - what would the result have been if the option had been given in the UK? Or the US? Probably not as dramatic as the German result - which makes me wonder whether Google has missed a trick by not providing the option elsewhere. If they did so, and an even tinier fraction than the 2.9% in privacy-aware Germany objected, they might be able to be even bolder about proclaiming that people love Street View.....

Consent: a red herring?

I asked Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, a question about 'opt-in' or 'opt-out', in a panel session at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference in Brussels in January, to which he gave an interesting answer, but one that was greeted with more than a little dismay. In essence, his answer was that the whole question of 'opt-in/opt-out', and by implication the whole issue of consent, was a bit of a red herring. Unsurprisingly, that was not a popular view at a conference where many of the delegates were privacy advocates - but he did and does have a very good point. He went on to explain, quite reasonably, that if someone wants something online, they'll just consent to anything - scrolling down through whatever legalese is put in the consent form without reading it, then clicking OK without a second thought, just to get at the service or website they want. And he's right, isn't he? That IS what we all do, except in the most exceptional circumstances.

The question, then, is what can or should be done about it. Peter Fleischer's implication - one shared, it appears, by most in the industry, is that we should realise that emptiness and unhelpfulness of consent, and not bang on so much about 'opt-in' or 'opt-out'. We're missing the point, and barking up the wrong tree. And, to a certain extent, I'm sure he's right. As things stand, consent, and opt-in, and not really very helpful. However, it seems to me that he's also missing the point - whether deliberately, as it suits the interests of his employers to have opt-out systems and allow such things as browse-wrap consent on the net, or because he thinks there's no alternative, I wouldn't like to say - in the conclusions that he draws, and the suggestions as to what we do next.

If consent, in its current form on the net, is next to meaningless, rather than abandoning the concept as useless wouldn't it be better to find a way to make it more meaningful? This is something that many people are wrestling with - including the EnCoRe (Ensuring Consent & Revocation) group - and something I shall be presenting a paper about at the BILETA conference in Vienna next week. The way I see it, the internet offers unprecedented opportunities for real-time communication and interaction, for supplying information and for allowing users choices and options - shouldn't there be a way to harness these opportunities to make the consent process more communicative, more interactive, more 'real-time', and to give users more choice and more options?

Peter Fleischer's employers, Google, actually do some really interesting and positive things in this field - the Google Dashboard and Google's AdPreferences both provide information and allow options and choices for people whose data is being gathered and used - the next stage is for these to be given more prominence, for right now they're pretty hidden away, and it's mostly just the hackers and privacy advocates that even know they exist, let alone use them well. If they can perhaps Google can help consent to become much more than a red herring, and instead part of the basic process of the internet.