Recent events regarding privacy and the internet have left me wondering if we are being somewhat naïve. We are starting to see a slew of new laws, strategies and technologies for protecting our privacy in what is effectively a public space. The end-user however is not, as far as I can tell, really getting the benefit of this - indeed if anyone is it is the emerging privacy-industrial complex [1] as some have written.
It is utterly naïve to believe that laws, strategies, intentions, grand speeches, certifications, automatic filtering, classification iconography and so on make for better end-user privacy. The more we do this the more confused we become, and simultaneously we lose sight of what we're really trying to achieve. Spare a thought for the poor end-users.
There is a great deal that is misunderstood or not known by privacy advocates about how the internet, computers and information systems work - I fear in a lot of cases either some don't want to understand because it takes them outside of their comfort zone, or the semantic gap between the engineers and the legal/advocacy side is too great and that bridging this gap is extraordinarily difficult for both parties.
I worry about our lack of formality and discipline, possibly in equal quantities. We – the privacy community – lack these aspects to really understand and accept the fundamentals of our area and how to apply this to the information systems we are trying to protect. In some cases we are actively fighting against the need to scientifically ground our chosen area.
We must take a moment to think and understand what problem we are really trying to solve. The more philosophical works by Solove and Nissenbaum address the overall concept of privacy. I'm not sure that the implications of these are really understood. Part of the problem is that general theories of information [2] are very abstract and obtuse when compared with the legal views of the above authors, and we've done very little to tie these areas together to produce the necessary scientific formalisation of privacy we need.
As an example, the Privacy by Design (PbD) manifesto is being waived by many to be the commandments of privacy and following these magically solves everything. This only leads to “technical debt” and greater problems in the future. Often we find the engineers, R&D teams and the scientists excluded from, and outside of, this discussion.
I think we're missing the point what privacy really is and certainly we have little idea at this time how to effectively build information systems with inherent privacy [3] as a property of those systems. I have one initial conclusion:
WE HAVE NO UNDERLYING THEORY OF PRIVACY
We have no common definitions, common language, common semantics nor mappings between our individual worlds: legal, advocacy and engineering. Worse, in each of these worlds terminology and semantics are not always so well internally defined.
When an [software] engineer says “data collection”, "log" or "architecture", these do not mean the same to a lawyer or a consumer advocate. Indeed I don't think these terms semantically map even remotely cleanly – if at all - between these groups.
A set of PowerPoint slides with a strategy, a vision, a manifesto, good intentions, project plan or a classifications scheme mean very little and without some form of semantics are wasted, token efforts that only add to the complexity and confusion of a rapidly changing field.
We desperately need to address the problem that we must create a way of communicating amongst ourselves through which all of the internal factions within the privacy community can effectively understand each other's point of view. Only then might we even have a chance of realistically and effectively addressing the moving target of privacy issues facing end- users and businesses that rely so much on the interchange and analysis of information.
The problem with formally (or rigorously) defining anything is that it has the nasty tendency to expose holes and weaknesses in our thinking. Said holes and weaknesses are not entirely appreciated, especially when it challenges an established school of thought or a political or dogmatic balance [4].
The privacy community is constantly developing new laws and legal arguments, new sets of guidelines, manifestos and doom scenarios while the engineers are trying to address these often inconsistent and complex ideas through technical means. From the engineering perspective not only we are internally exposing flaws in database design, information system architecture and user experience but also the mismatch between engineering, legal, the world of the consumer advocate and ultimately a company's information strategy.
An information strategy needs to address everything from how the engineers develop software to how you want your company to be perceived by the consumer. How many information strategies actually address the role that information plays in a modern, global consumer ecosystem where the central concept is the collection and processing of user information? Of those, how many address the engineering and scientific levels of information?
We must take a serious retrenchment [5] step and look back at what we have created. Then we need ruthlessly carve away anything that does not either solve the communication issue within the privacy community or does not immediately serve the end-user. Reemphasizing the latter point, this explicitly means the end-user values, not what we as a privacy community might perceive to be valued by the end-user.
We must fully appreciate the close link between privacy and information, and that privacy is one of the most crosscutting of disciplines. Privacy is going to expose every single flaw in the way we collect, manage, process and use information from the user experience, as well as the application and services eco-system, and even the manner in which we conduct our system and software engineering processes and information governance. The need to get privacy right is critical not just for the existence of privacy as a technical discipline in its own right (alongside security, architecture, etc) but also for the consumer and the business.
The emphasis must be placed on the deep technical knowledge of experts in information systems – these must be the drivers and unifiers between the engineers, the lawyers, the advocates and ultimately the users. Without this deep, holistic, scientific and mathematical foundation we will not be able to sufficiently nor consistency address or govern any issues that arise in the construction of our information systems at any level of abstraction.
If the work we do in privacy does not have a scientific, consistent and formal underpinning [6] that brings together the engineers, lawyers and advocates then privacy is waste of time at best and deeply destructive to the information systems at worst.
Without this we are a disjointed community caring for ourselves and not the business or consumer and privacy becomes just a bureaucratic exercise to fulfill the notions of performing a process and metrics rendered as meaningful as random numbers.
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PostScript:
Via Twitter I came across a talk given by Jean Bezivin entitled "Should we Resurrect Software Engineering?" presented at the Choose Forum in December 2012. Many of the things he presented are analogous to what is happening in privacy. He makes the point a number of times that we have never addressed the missing underlying theory of software engineering and how to really unify the various communities, fields and techniques in this area. Two points I particularly liked was that we concentrated on the solution (MDE) but never thought about the problem; the other point is the use Albert Camus' quote
<< Mal nommer les choses, c'est ajouterau malheur du monde >>
[To misname things is to add misery to the world]
A subtle hint to getting the fundamentals right: terminology and semantics!
Notes
[1] #pii2012
: The Emergent Privacy-Industrial Complex
[2] Jerry Seligmann, Jon Barwise (1997)
Information Flow. Cambridge University Press.
[3] I like the idea of
privacy being an inherent construct in system design in much the same way that inherent safety emerged from
chemical/industrial plant design
[4] A blog article discussing
“mathematical catastrophes” – two that come to mind are Russel and Frege and also Russel and Gödel. Both related but the latter’s challenge to the mathematical school of thought was dramatic to say the least.
[5] A formal retrenchment step in that we not just start again but actively record what we’re backtracking on. Poppleton et.al. constructed
a theory of retrenchment for software design using formal methods; the same principles apply here.
[6] If you’re still in doubt just remember that whatever decisions are made with respect to privacy, there’s a programmer writing formal, mathematical statements encoding this. Lessig’s
Code is Law principle.
