transparency perspective is closely related to the issue
of maintaining provenance for scientific data [ 4, 11].
CONCLUSION
Alan Westin published his landmark study Privacy
and Freedom in 1967 [ 12]. Still in the age of main-frame computers, it set the stage for thinking about
privacy over the next three decades. Westin presented what has become a classic definition of privacy, emphasizing the individual’s right to control
how personal information “is communicated to others.” An information-accountability perspective on
privacy would reframe this definition, shifting toward
the use of any information. Following Westin, we
would say that privacy is the claim of individuals,
groups, and institutions to determine for themselves
when, how, and to what extent information about
them is used lawfully and appropriately by others.
Westin’s work is essential today for identifying the
role of privacy in a free society. However, advances in
communications and information technology and the
ease of data searching and aggregation have rendered
his definition incomplete as a framework for information policy and information architectures that are
intended to be policy aware.
Will the new tools and laws we’ve described here
put an end to all privacy invasion, unfair misuse of personal information, copyright infringement, and identity theft? Of course not. Perfect compliance is not the
proper standard by which to judge laws or systems that
help enforce them. Rather we should ask how to build
systems that encourage compliance and maximize the
possibility of accountability for violations. We should
see clearly that our information-policy goals cannot be
achieved by restricting the flow of information alone.
While the accountability approach is a departure from
contemporary computer and network policy techniques, it is far more consistent with the way legal rules
traditionally work in democratic societies.
Contemporary information systems depart from
the norm of social systems in the way they seek to
enforce rules up front by precluding the possibility of
violation, generally through the application of strong
cryptographic techniques. In contrast, we follow rules
because we are aware of what they are and because we
know there will be consequences, after the fact, if we
violate them. Technology will better support freedom
by relying on these social compacts than by seeking to
supplant them. c
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DANIEL J. WEITZNER ( djweitzner@csail.mit.edu) is Director of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Decentralized Information
Group and principal research scientist in the MIT Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, and
Technology and Society Policy Director of the the World Wide Web
Consortium.
HAROLD ABELSON ( hal@mit.edu) is the Class of 1922 Professor of
Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA.
TIM BERNERS-LEE ( timbl@csail.mit.edu) is Director of the World
Wide Web Consortium and holds the 3Com Founders chair and is a
senior research scientist in the Laboratory for Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA.
JOAN FEIGENBAUM ( joan.feigenbaum@yale.edu) is the Grace
Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University,
New Haven, CT.
JAMES HENDLER ( hendler@cs.rpi.edu) is the Tetherless World
Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
GERALD JAY SUSSMAN ( gjs@mit.edu) is the Panasonic Professor of
Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA.
The authors would like to thank Randy Davis and Butler Lampson for their insightful comments on accountability, copyright, and privacy.
The work reported here was conducted at MIT, RPI, and Yale with support from the
National Science Foundation Cybertrust Grant (award #04281) and IARPA (award
#FA8750-07-2-0031).
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