In my LinkedIn and Facebook feed from the last week, a lot has
been talked about the new Apple Ad - and privacy around its users. The new ad talks about a young woman – ELLIE and
she discovers that her personal data (read mobile activities) is being
auctioned before a rapt audience, eager to know the ‘value’ of a particular
data (an Apple phone user).
Watch the Ad here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOXK4EVFmJY
The data
which is being talked about (something advertisers harp upon) are her iPhone's browsing
history, emails, location data, contacts, purchase history, medical
history, and more. At one shot Ellie realizes that all the personal information
is being sold. After realizing this, she presses the Mail Privacy Protection + the App
Tracking Transparency and at that point, all the members' auctioneer and bidders vanish
into thin air, one by one.
Apple early this year launched a fresh privacy protection update.
With this launch of the iPhone’s new policy, the App Tracking Transparency (ATT)
Facebook is set to lose approximately $12.8 billion, according to a report
published on Forbes. So, how important is privacy? In an increasingly digital world,
where anyone can track and learn about anything, does privacy really is a
concern? An innocuous check-in at a restaurant or a place can be concocted by
the hottest job of the century by zillions of data managers combined with social
scientists. Have collated some of the top definitions of privacy mentioned
below. Accordingly to IAPP
What does privacy mean?
Well, it depends on who you ask. Broadly speaking, privacy
is the right to be let alone, or freedom from interference or intrusion.
Information privacy is the right to have some control over how your personal
information is collected and used. Ask most people these days what they think
of when it comes to privacy and you’re likely to have a conversation about
massive data breaches, wearable tech, social networking, targeted advertising
miscues—not to mention the Snowden revelations. Add to that, various cultures have widely
differing views on what a person’s rights are when it comes to privacy and how
it should be regulated.
As per the Privacy international, the following details are mentioned below as far as the definition of privacy is concerned.
What is privacy?
Privacy is a fundamental right, essential to autonomy and
the protection of human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which many
other human rights are built. Privacy enables us to create barriers and manage
boundaries to protect ourselves from unwarranted interference in our lives,
which allows us to negotiate who we are and how we want to interact with the
world around us. Privacy helps us establish boundaries to limit who has access
to our bodies, places and things, as well as our communications and our
information. The rules that protect privacy give us the ability to assert our
rights in the face of significant power imbalances. As a result, privacy is an
essential way we seek to protect ourselves and society against arbitrary and
unjustified use of power, by reducing what can be known about us and done to
us, while protecting us from others who may wish to exert control. Privacy is
essential to who we are as human beings, and we make decisions about it every
single day. It gives us a space to be ourselves without judgment, allows us to
think freely without discrimination, and is an important element of giving us
control over who knows what about us.
The Dictionary of Cambridge someone's right to keep their personal matters and
relationships secret:
As per the Harvard Business Review's privacy policy What Was Privacy? by Lew McCreary (October 2008)- Why is that question in the past tense? Because individuals can no longer feel confident that the details of their lives—from identifying numbers to cultural preferences—will be treated with discretion rather than exploited. Even as Facebook users happily share the names of their favorite books, movies, songs, and brands, they often regard marketers’ use of that information as an invasion of privacy. In this wide-ranging essay, McCreary, a senior editor at HBR, examines numerous facets of the privacy issue, from Google searches, public shaming on the internet, and cell phone etiquette to passenger screening devices, public surveillance cameras, and corporate chief privacy officers. He notes that IBM has been a leader on privacy; its policy forswearing the use of employees’ genetic information in hiring and benefits decisions predated the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act by three years. Now IBM is involved in an open-source project known as Higgins to provide users with transportable, potentially anonymous online presences. Craigslist, whose CEO calls it “as close to 100% user driven as you can get,” has taken an extremely conservative position on privacy—perhaps easier for a company with a declared lack of interest in maximizing revenue. But TJX and other corporate victims of security breaches have discovered that retaining consumers’ transaction information can be both costly and risky. Companies that underestimate the importance of privacy to their customers or fail to protect it may eventually face harsh regulation, reputational damage, or both. The best thing they can do, says the author, is negotiate directly with those customers over where to draw the line.
As per Stanford University The term “privacy” is used frequently in ordinary language
as well as in philosophical, political and legal discussions, yet there is no
single definition or analysis or meaning of the term. The concept of privacy
has broad historical roots in sociological and anthropological discussions
about how extensively it is valued and preserved in various cultures. Moreover,
the concept has historical origins in well known philosophical discussions,
most notably Aristotle’s distinction between the public sphere of political
activity and the private sphere associated with family and domestic life. Yet
historical use of the term is not uniform, and there remains confusion over the
meaning, value and scope of the concept of privacy. Early treatises on privacy
appeared with the development of privacy protection in American law from the 1890s
onward, and privacy protection was justified largely on moral grounds. This
literature helps distinguish descriptive accounts of privacy, describing what
is in fact protected as private, from normative accounts of privacy defending
its value and the extent to which it should be protected. In these discussions
some treat privacy as an interest with moral value, while others refer to it as
a moral or legal right that ought to be protected by society or the law.
Clearly one can be insensitive to another’s privacy interests without violating
any right to privacy, if there is one.
The Santa Clara university
What is Privacy? Michael McFarland, SJ - Privacy has many
meanings. The most general is freedom from interference or intrusion, the right
"to be let alone," a formulation cited by Louis Brandeis and Samuel
Warren in their groundbreaking 1890 paper on privacy. 1 This recognizes that each
person has a sphere of existence and activity that properly belongs to that
individual alone, where he or she should be free of constraint, coercion, and
even uninvited observation. As we would say today, each of us needs our own
"space." Most would recognize the protected sphere to include
personal opinions, personal communications, and how one behaves behind closed
doors, at least as long as these do not lead to any significant threats to
society. Many would also include behavior within the family and other intimate
relationships in that sphere.
Pic Source - iPhone screengrab
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