Embedding Privacy in ICT Architectures

Van 23 – 26 oktober 2015 vond in Amsterdam de Amsterdam Privacy Conference plaats, georganiseerd door het Amsterdam Platform for Privacy Research (APPR). Dit is een samenwerkingsverband van privacy onderzoekers binnen de Universiteit van Amsterdam vanuit verschillende achtergronden en disciplines. De conferentie werd uitzonderlijk druk bezocht door rechtswetenschappers, privacy-juristen, informatici, politicologen, cryptologen, e.d. ‘from all around the world’. Samen met John van der Pas (Saxion Hogeschool) presenteerde ik daar een paper waarin we de stelling verkondigen dat de privacy van een burger (en zeker in het Big Data tijdvak!) alleen beschermd kan worden wanneer zijn belang op privacy en de bescherming van zijn persoonsgegevens meegenomen wordt in de ontwikkeling van soft- en hardware-architecturen. We beginnen deze paper als volgt:

“According to Johnson & Grandison (2007), failure to safeguard privacy of users of services provided by private and governmental organisations, leaves individuals with the risk of exposure to a number of undesirable effects of information processing. Loss of control over information about a person may lead to fraud, identity theft, reputation damage, and may cause psychosocial consequences ranging from mild irritation, unease, social exclusion, physical harm or even, in extreme cases, death. Although pooh-poohed upon by some opinion leaders from search engine and ICT industries for over a decade (Sprenger, 1999; Esguerra, 2009), the debate in the wake of events like the tragic case of Amanda Todd could be interpreted as supporting a case for proper attention to citizens’ privacy. Truth be told, for a balanced discussion on privacy in the age of Facebook one should not turn towards the social media environment that seems to hail any new development in big data analysis and profiling-based marketing as a breathtaking innovation. If the myopic view of technology pundits is put aside, a remarkably lively debate on privacy and related issues may be discerned in both media and scientific communities alike. A quick keyword search on ‘privacy’, limited to the years 2000-2015, yields huge numbers of publications: Worldcat lists 19,240; Sciencedirect 52,566, IEEE explore 71,684 and Google scholar a staggering 1,880,000. This makes clear that privacy is still a concept considered relevant by both the general public and academic and professional audiences. Quite impressive for a subject area that has been declared ‘dead’”.

Citatie: J. van de Pas, G.J. van Bussel, ‘Embedding Privacy in ICT Architectures. The citizen as public stakeholder in architecture development’, B. van der Sloot (red.), Proceedings of the Amsterdam Privacy Conference (21-26 October 2015), Amsterdam (Amsterdam: APPR, 2015), 14 pages, incl. references (only available on USB). PDF

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