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 ( [e-mail]) 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 ( [e-mail]) is the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. TIM BERNERS-LEE ( [e-mail]) 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 ( [e-mail]) is the Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Computer Science at Yale University, New Haven, CT. JAMES HENDLER ( [e-mail]) is the Tetherless World Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. GERALD JAY SUSSMAN ( [e-mail]) 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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