What is Privacy?

• 2 ways to think about privacy:

  • Freedom from government observation and intrusion
  • Freedom to control one’s own personal information

• In technology realm, privacy means that a person has control of their data

  • control means:
    • that a person can specify whether he or she wants to share information and the purposes for which they want to share their information
    • they should have a say in how the data is collected, used, and shared
    • that a person has a say in when they are tracked and monitored
  • privacy rights are individual rights that exist independent of any type of technology

Info

A core privacy right for most Americans is the concept that the government’s power to interfere in the privacy of its citizens is limited.

• This means that people and their information must be free from unreasonable government intrusion.
• The government must not investigate a person or his or her personal information without a good reason.
• Courts spend a lot of time defining when governments are allowed to investigate their citizens.

Types of Personal Information

• What people consider private information varies
  • generally considered private info:
    • SSN
    • financial information
    • health information
    • biometric data
    • criminal history data
    • family data

Public Records and Privacy

Public records are records that the law states must be available to the public.

• people often have little control over the content of public records and how others use the data
• Laws determine whether a record is public or not
• E.g.,
  • minutes of meetings of government agencies, real estate filings, and court records, including most types of criminal records
• a court docket is a type of public record
  • official schedule of a court and the events in the cases that are pending before a court
  • Electronic dockets may even include the actual documents filed in a court case, called pleadings
    • can contain data about civil lawsuits and criminal actions, as well as personal information