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About the Center
Major Projects
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Privacy in Public: Ethics, Privacy and the Technology of Public Surveillance
Issues |
Deborah Johnson |
Helen Nissenbaum |
Deirdre Mulligan |
Richard De George
Recent advances in technology have greatly expanded our ability to acquire private and confidential
information as well as to access public records. Increasingly, technology is being developed to expand
our capacities to monitor ongoing individual behavior. Making credit card purchases, placing online
orders, visiting and registering at websites, and participating in online chat groups are all activities
that technology allows us to monitor. Chips implanted in various commodities, home security systems,
EZ passes on toll roads, video technology, and face recognition technologies are but a few examples in
which our powers of surveillance are steadily affecting our everyday lives. Information technology is
essential to gathering such personal information and/or making it publicly accessible.
The prevailing ethical view of privacy has been that we ought to protect a sphere of privacy as a
matter of "respect for persons" and out of concern for the value of individual liberty. But in
general that view has been applied only to issues pertaining to intimate realms, such as family, sex,
and medicine, with the aim of limiting governmental intrusion. Such an approach has yet to explore
fully whether there is a sphere of privacy that is worthy of protection from non-governmental
organizations. Nor has there been sufficient attention devoted to clarifying how to draw the boundary
between "public" and "private" spheres when both of are in non-governmental arenas.
Recently, ethicists have begun to rethink the conventional view of privacy in light of the challenges
raised by the technologies now available. The key issue is whether there is a morally legitimate sphere
of privacy in the public sphere - one that extends beyond matters of governmental oversight and
surveillance - that should be recognized and protected.
This series of seminars addressed various ethical aspects of these matters. Each seminar included discussion
of a case study, a public address by the visiting scholar, followed by commentary by a local campus scholar.
The series was supported by a New Frontiers Grant from the Office of the
Vice-Provost for Research at Indiana University.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
"Privacy in Public? Technology, Privacy, and Democracy"
Professor Johnson is the Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics at the University of
Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is co-editor of Computers, Ethics, and
Social Values (Prentice-Hall), author of Computer Ethics (Prentice-Hall), and co-editor
of the journal, Ethics and Information Technology (Kluwer).
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Eden Medina, Richard Miller, and Deborah Johnson after the first Privacy and Technology lecture.
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There was a workshop at 3 p.m. with case study discussion. The photo shows the groups
making notes about the issues raised in the case studies. The lecture was at 4 p.m., with
a response presented by Professor Eden Medina, School of Informatics.
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Thursday, October 26, 2006
"Privacy and Information Technology: The Trouble with the Public/Private Dichotomy "
Professor Nissenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication and a
Senior Fellow of the Information Law Institute, New York University. She is co-editor of
Computers, Ethics, and Social Values (Prentice-Hall) and a founding editor of the journal,
Ethics and Information Technology (Kluwer).
The workshop included a case study discussion, the lecture, and a response from
Professor Barry Bull of the IU School of Education.
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Helen Nissenbaum, Richard Miller, and Barry Bull
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Thursday, February 1, 2007
"In Defense of Public Places"
Professor Mulligan is a clinical professor of law and director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and
Public Policy Clinic at University of California Berkeley. The clinic works in client advocacy,
public interest law, interdisciplinary research, and in developing standards and protocols. Mulligan
writes about the risks and opportunities that technology presents to privacy and democracy. Professor
Fred Cate, IUB School of Law, presented the response. The seminar included discussion of a case study,
the lecture, response, and more discussion.
Prior to coming to Berkeley, Mulligan served as staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology
in Washington, D.C., where she worked to improve legal and technical protections for individual privacy.
Recent publications include “Storing Our Lives Online: Expanded Email Storage Raises Complex Policy
Issues,” with Ari Schwartz and Indrani Mondal, I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information
Community (2005), and “Reasonable Expectations in Electronic Communications: A Critical Perspective
on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,” 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1557 (2004).
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Fred Cate, Richard Miller, and Deirdre Mulligan
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
"Privacy, Public Space and Non-Governmental Surveillance"
Professor De George is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, of Russian and East European
Studies, and of Business Administration, and Co-Director of the International Center for Ethics in
Business at the University of Kansas. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including The
Ethics of Information Technology and Business (Blackwell). The workshop began with discussion
of a case study, followed by the lecture, response from Peter Finn, Department of Psychological and
Brain Sciences, IUB, and questions and answers. The host was Brian Schrag, acting director of the Poynter
Center.
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Brian Schrag, Richard De George, and Peter Finn
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