HighLight Heading
July 2006
Research Conference Coverage
Panelists offer privacy perspectives
Marthand Nookala
Dan Murray
Ken Keller
Following Colin Bennett’s presentation, the session turned to the perspectives of the three panelists. Marthand Nookala described the federal government’s Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) initiative, “a communication network…between vehicles and roadside infrastructure” that aims to improve safety. When in place, the system will collect a multitude of data. Who owns that information, and how will it be used? A working group with representatives from the USDOT, 10 state DOTs, the National Association of County Engineers, and manufacturers are defining nine privacy principles for the initiative. “The fundamental philosophy,” he said, “is that personal information should be acquired, disclosed, and used only in ways that protect the privacy of individuals.” The group is also developing seven categories of privacy limits on uses.
Dan Murray said the private sector has three main concerns regarding data privacy: (1) civil litigation; (2) sensitive and proprietary information; and (3) the lack of controls to prevent data used by government and researchers from finding its way back to his first two concerns. Industry policy and protocols aren’t sufficient, as the vast majority of companies outed recently all had privacy policies in place. “Enron, Tyco, and MCI were all responsible for self-regulation,” he noted. Privacy discussions need to be moved out of the courtroom and into legislatures and the Congress. “The United States is so far behind [in] developing a national sense of policy, we’ve essentially punted,” he said. “We need to catch up to other countries.”
Ken Keller said the first thing to keep in mind is that expectations about privacy and public space keep changing. For example, a party-line telephone—a “public” space—was replaced by “private” lines, which are now complemented by cell phones and e-mail that are more accessible by others. “The problem is that the boundary between public and private is being driven primarily by technology,” he said, “not by anyone’s normative idea.”
Keller also asserted that Americans and Europeans have much different views of privacy. In Europe, the greatest concern is toward private organizations; in the United States, it is the fear of government. “That is the problem: we don’t trust the organization that would put [privacy policy] in place,” he said. “This leads to why we don’t have a national policy and leaves us with the enormous chaos that we have.”
This historic distrust may also explain why Americans complain more about red-light cameras at intersections than surveillance cameras at gas stations, Keller noted. To gain trust, he encouraged government organizations to clearly communicate their policies, follow their own rules, and stress the public benefit of the data collection.