Privacy In The Community

The Limits of Privacy provides citizens, policy-makers and legislators with four concise criteria with which to determine when the right of privacy should be preserved and when that right should be curbed for the public good. Combining social science, ethics and the law in drawing his conclusions, Etzioni closes his provocative book with an outline for a new legal doctrine of privacy. Regardless of the privacy issue we explore - whether that of our President or of our neighbor, of our medical records or of our e-mail - Etzioni's novel approach is sure to prove helpful.

Recent disclosures about the bulk collection of domestic phone call records and other signals intelligence programs have stimulated widespread debate about the implications of such practices for the civil liberties and privacy of Americans. In the wake of these disclosures, many have identified a need for the intelligence community to engage more deeply with outside privacy experts and stakeholders. At the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to address the privacy implications of emerging technologies, public and individual preferences and attitudes toward privacy, and ethical approaches to data collection and use. This report summarizes discussions between experts from academia and the private sector and from the intelligence community on private sector best practices and privacy research results.

In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

Over the last several years, the realm of technology and privacy has been transformed, creating a landscape that is both dangerous and encouraging. Significant changes include large increases in communications bandwidths; the widespread adoption of computer networking and public-key cryptography; new digital media that support a wide range of social relationships; a massive body of practical experience in the development and application of data-protection laws; and the rapid globalization of manufacturing, culture, and policy making. The essays in this book provide a new conceptual framework for the analysis and debate of privacy policy and for the design and development of information systems.