Nissenbaum2011ContextualApproach

#digitalethics2024

Helen Nissenbaum, "A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online"

Bibliographic info

⇒ Nissenbaum, H. (2011). "A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online". PDF.

Commentary

⇒ In general, what about this text makes it particularly interesting or thought-provoking? What do you see as weaknesses?
Nissenbaum presents an alternative approach to current privacy policies: the theory of contextual integrity. I think it is interesting how Nissenbaum applies ethical and digital terminology to examples of big companies that everyone can relate to. This makes the text more understandable for people without specialized knowledge. Her final point is that, yes we should take measures to attack the problems around online privacy, but that we should not make online privacy a distinct category. The solving of privacyproblems should follow from a contextual integrity policy that also includes the context from social life.

One weakness is very subjective, Nissenbaum lost me a couple of times while reading. I guess, the information density is so high, that I sometimes missed out on the core argumentation. Maybe also because of the rather long sentences.

Excerpts & Key Quotes

Contextual Integrity

"The theory of contextual integrity offers a shorter and more systematic path to this point by invoking learned wisdom from mature systems of informational norms that have evolved to accommodate diverse legitimate interests as well as general moral and political principles and contextspecific purposes and values."

Comment:

This citation is essential for the text since the theory of contextual integrity explains that all online activities are deep down integrated within human social life and also mirror that 'hetreogeneity' of offline experiences. We should therefore not seperate online privacy issues from offline privacy issues.

Transparency Paradox

"Thus the transparency paradox: transparency of textual meaning and transparency of practice conflict in all but rare instances."

Comment:

The current privacy theory that can be described as the notice-and-consent, or transparency-and-choice approach, can be summarized by the fact that if humans are informed about their privacy it would be a just way to extract and use or protect data. informed consent is the core. However, this doesn't solve the issue around the the Transparency Paradox. It is not possible to create a transparency of the textual meaning (of for instance important information concerning a business) and transparency of practice conflict (seperate from each other). By showing that this transparency paradox is not solved by the notice-and-consent approach, Nissenbaum has another argument for her contextual integrity approach.

Radically Heterogeneous

"Not only is life online integrated into social life, and hence not productively conceived as a discrete context, it is radically heterogeneous, comprising multiple social contexts, not just one, and certainly is not just a commercial context where protecting privacy amounts to protecting consumer privacy and commercial information."

Comment:

There is the idea of generating one set of privacy rules for the internet. Nissenbaum is against this idea, for she argues that online activity and privacy is heterogeneous. And the internet creates no discrete context. The 'net', how she describes it: is not one sole domain, but all experiences, input that have been used on the internet. I think her argumentation is very straightforward and from these examples it does indeed become clear that a contextual integrity approach would be a more suitable solution to online privacy problems.