Reasons For Both Pessimism And Optimism: A Response To The Commentaries

What is it about?

We had thought that our piece presented about as bleak a picture of the current privacy climate as could be imagined. These three superb commentaries, however, suggest that we may have fallen short of plumbing the depths of the current problem. Yet, if they are, possibly, even more despairing than we are about the current state of affairs, we read these commentaries as more optimistic about the prospects for an improvement of the situation. For instance, it is certainly encouraging to see some litigation outcomes going in favor of consumers, as Jagadish points out. Likewise, Mulligan, Regan, and King (MRK) propose that the very bleak current state of privacy is reinvigorating a collective interest in protection against surveillance. Even Oyserman and Schwarz can be seen as optimistic about the prospects for positive progress in the sense that they propose that public information campaigns could yield substantial benefits. Privacy, as Jagadish highlights, has always been a nuanced concept. As also our review emphasizes, privacy protection cannot be conceived of as an onoff switch. Privacy protection is about the management of information flows within and across what Jagadish refers to as “circles,” or Nissenmbaum would refer to as contexts, or Altman and later Petronio would refer to as “boundaries.” It is precisely this type of management that is made increasingly difficult for consumers given, on the one hand, technological progress facilitating profitable data harvesting, and, on the other hand, lack of regulation of the data market.

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