There are many reasons for privacy advocates to be a bit depressed at the moment. We are all creating such rich digital footprints simply through our daily activities that the traditional notion of privacy can sometimes seem rather irrelevant. Our ‘private space’ is being squeezed from all corners, with businesses and government hungry to accumulate as much data as possible about us all. And, of course, many consumers are willing participants in this process, sharing large amounts of personal information with friends and increasingly to the world at large through Twitter and Facebook etc.
In developing the faculty’s next thought leadership report, I have been looking into some of the issues related to privacy. And over the last week, I have been fortunate to discuss the future of privacy with a couple of experts in the field – Marty Abrams and Richard Thomas, both of the law firm Hunton & Williams, although Richard of course has recently retired as Information Commissioner.
Despite the overwhelming pressure against privacy, they were both optimistic about its future. A few thoughts came out of the discussion:
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While it is a slippery concept, privacy remains a core value to our society. The new opportunities from IT mean that we are very likely to see changes in what privacy means and how we define the boundary between private and public information, especially amongst younger generations. However, some concept of privacy is likely to survive.
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Although they may push the boundaries, businesses remain sensitive to the concerns of consumers here. Mistakes are clearly made, such as the recent Google debacle over Buzz. However, businesses by and large recognise the risk to their reputation of stepping too far over the boundaries and choose to constrain what they do with data on this basis. Richard calls this ‘enlightened self-interest’.
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Consumers are taking a greater interest in this area and becoming more proactive. In a 2009 survey by the Information Commission, 94% of respondents were concerned about the protection of personal information. This ranks a close second behind concerns about crime and reflects a 24% increase since 2004. While this may seem at odds with ‘Facebook behaviour’, it may just reflect a more nuanced approach to personal information, which is based on control and choice.
Clearly, there are many unknowns and challenges in this area. Globalisation, outsourcing and cloud computing all give rise to new challenges about managing data across an entire supply chain and building global consensus on privacy. The way that information permeates an organisation today pushes far greater responsibility on every individual to manage data in accordance with privacy principles.
However, the fact that the media are still talking about privacy almost every day shows how much it still matters to many people. That, in itself, has to be good news for privacy supporters.