Privacy as Contextual Integrity: Bridging Ethics and Technology

Please join us for colloquium guest speaker, Helen Nissenbaum. Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, and Computer Science, at New York University, where she is Director of the Information Law Institute. She has written and edited eight books, including Privacy, Big Data and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement, with J. Lane, V. Stodden and S. Bender (Cambridge, 2014), Values at Play in Digital Games, with M. Flanagan (MIT Press, 2014), and Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest with F. Brunton (MIT Press, 2015). Her publications have appeared in journals of philosophy, politics, law, media studies, information studies, and computer science. The National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have supported her work on privacy, trust online, and security, as well as several studies of values in computer system design, search engines, digital games, facial recognition technology, and health information systems. Nissenbaum holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University and a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Witwatersrand. 

Title: Privacy as Contextual Integrity: Bridging Ethics and Technology

Abstract: The theory of contextual integrity places appropriate flow of personal information at the heart of privacy. It locates privacy’s value in the capacity of information flow to affect interests, promote (or quash) societal values, and sustain (or impede) context specific values and purposes. Contextual integrity offers a framework for addressing concrete policy issues as well as technical design challenges, but in addition, it holds potential as a much needed bridge between technical research and privacy concerns motivating ethical and political analysis