Privacy as concept, right and regulation¶

Missing cards

Two sources have no PDF and no card: bennett2018gdpr (Bennett 2018) and vandijk2016risk (van Dijk et al. 2016). The page builds on the other six. Fairfield & Engel and Solove are also only partly read (see the cards).

What the cluster is about¶

The cluster brings together texts that answer what privacy is and how it should be protected [T]. The sources come from different fields: legal philosophy (Solove), economics and law (Fairfield & Engel), experimental economics (Cloos et al.), human rights (Alegre), law and ethics (Vedder & Naudts) and computer science (Abiteboul & Stoyanovich) [T].

A recurring theme is whether privacy is individual or collective. Solove argues that privacy should be understood as a societal value, not just an individual one (Solove 2011, p. 47) [U]. Fairfield & Engel argue that the group, not the individual, is the relevant privacy unit (Fairfield & Engel 2015, p. 456) [U]. Vedder & Naudts argue that the GDPR's focus on the individual data subject fits poorly when algorithms act on groups (Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 218) [U].

Another theme is the relationship between privacy and the regulation of data and algorithms. Abiteboul & Stoyanovich describe the GDPR as aimed at the data subject's insight and control (p. 2) [U]. Alegre and Vedder & Naudts both argue that data protection law does not reach far enough (Alegre 2021, p. 6; Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 219) [U].

Sources in the cluster¶

Source	Main claim in one sentence	Role in the cluster (central/peripheral)
Solove 2011	The nothing-to-hide argument rests on a mistaken view of privacy as secrecy; privacy is a societal value (pp. 27, 47) [U]	Central [T]
Fairfield & Engel 2015	Privacy is a public good in the strict economic sense, and the group is the relevant unit (pp. 423, 456) [U]	Central [T]
Vedder & Naudts 2017	Accountability for algorithms cannot rest on data protection law alone (p. 219) [U]	Central [T]
Alegre 2021	Privacy is a gateway right; freedom of thought needs its own protection (pp. 2, 8) [U]	Peripheral [T]
Abiteboul & Stoyanovich 2019	Legal and ethical norms must be built into data systems from the start (pp. 1, 8) [U]	Peripheral [T]
Cloos et al. 2019	No conclusive evidence for or against the privacy paradox; value depends on the information (pp. 1, 10) [U]	Peripheral [T]
Bennett 2018	No PDF	–
van Dijk et al. 2016	No PDF	–

Shared questions and assumptions¶

Several sources call privacy a fundamental right or human right (Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 211; Cloos et al. 2019, p. 1) [U]. Alegre places privacy among the human rights that can be limited, unlike freedom of thought (Alegre 2021, p. 4) [U].
Several argue that privacy cannot be reduced to the individual's control over their own data (Solove 2011, p. 47; Fairfield & Engel 2015, pp. 456–457; Alegre 2021, p. 6; Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 218) [U].
Almost all sources start from the US or the EU; none is about Norway [T].
Only Solove is mainly about government collection of data (Solove 2011, pp. 21, 27–28) [U]. Vedder & Naudts and Abiteboul & Stoyanovich mention public decision-makers (Vedder & Naudts 2017, p. 206; Abiteboul & Stoyanovich 2019, pp. 3–4) [U].

Disagreements and tensions¶

Do individual rights work? Checked against the source texts:
- Abiteboul & Stoyanovich describe the GDPR's primary focus as giving data subjects ‘insight into, and control over’ their personal data (p. 2) [U]. They present the right to erasure and data portability as technical challenges to be solved (pp. 6–7) [U].
- Fairfield & Engel write that tools should not be centred on individual rights of review and deletion, which have proven largely ineffective (p. 457) [U].
- Vedder & Naudts write that it is difficult to uphold a focus on natural persons when algorithms affect large groups or potentially everyone (p. 218) [U].
- Abiteboul & Stoyanovich do not discuss whether the rights work. The tension therefore lies in what the sources take for granted, not in a direct disagreement [T].
Collective for different reasons: Solove grounds the societal value in pragmatism (Dewey) and Post (Solove 2011, pp. 49–50) [U]. Fairfield & Engel ground it in the economic theory of public goods and social dilemmas (pp. 421–423) [U]. They reach a similar conclusion from different traditions [T].
What is privacy part of? For Alegre, privacy is a ‘gateway right’ to freedom of thought (p. 8) [U]. For Solove, privacy is a plurality of problems without a single essence (p. 24) [U]. For Cloos et al., privacy has a value that can be measured in money (pp. 1–3) [U]. These understandings stand side by side without the sources debating each other [T].
The privacy paradox: Fairfield & Engel reject the explanation that consumers lie about their preferences and explain the gap as a social dilemma (p. 425) [U]. Cloos et al. test the paradox experimentally and find no conclusive evidence either way (p. 10) [U].

Use of concepts¶

Privacy / data protection: the sources rarely distinguish explicitly. Vedder & Naudts distinguish between data protection and broader accountability (p. 219) [U].
Public good: Fairfield & Engel use the term in the strict economic sense (p. 423) [U]. See the dokumenter-saker cluster for Bear & Mathur's opposing use [T].
Transparency: Abiteboul & Stoyanovich see transparency as a fundamental democratic value, but in tension with privacy (p. 4) [U]. Vedder & Naudts write that transparency as such does not constitute accountability (p. 215) [U].
Group: Fairfield & Engel (the group as unit, p. 456) and Vedder & Naudts (random groups, p. 210) use the word differently [T].
No separate concept pages have been made yet (docs/begreper/).

Connections to other clusters¶

Governance and surveillance: Solove and Bauman et al. both criticise the ‘balance’ framing of privacy and security (Solove 2011, pp. 34–37; Bauman et al. 2014, p. 137) [U]. Ruckenstein's informants used the nothing-to-hide argument (Ruckenstein & Granroth 2020, p. 18) [U]. See styring-overvaking.
Democracy and trust: Steiger and Hankey et al. link privacy to democracy and treat it as a human right (Steiger 2019, pp. 79, 88; Hankey et al. 2018, pp. 34, 43) [U]. See demokrati-tillit.
State and politics: NOU 2022:11 describes privacy (personvern) both as an individual right and as a collective societal good (pp. 9–10, 31) [U].

Possible use in the thesis [T]¶

The cluster can provide a map of different understandings of privacy against which the primary documents can be read: individual right, societal value, public good, gateway to other rights, and something with a price [T].
Solove's taxonomy (aggregation, exclusion, secondary use, distortion) can be used as a checklist for which problems the documents mention [T].
The question of whether individual rights work can be put to which rights and tools Norwegian documents emphasise [T].
Note that the cluster says very little about the state's own use of data; Solove is the exception [T].

Open questions for Rebekka¶

Do you have the PDFs for Bennett 2018 and van Dijk et al. 2016?
Which understanding of privacy is closest to your own working definition?
Should the cluster also include Norwegian or Nordic literature on privacy, which is currently missing?
Do Abiteboul & Stoyanovich and Cloos et al. belong in the thesis, or are they mainly contrasts?