The Architecture of Privacy

Chapter 1. What Is Privacy?

Privacy incursions in the name of progress, innovation, and ordered liberty jeopardize the continuing vitality of the political and intellectual culture that we say we value.

Julie E. Cohen, professor of law, Georgetown University

Privacy is important. These three words comprise the philosophical compass for this book, and summarize (albeit inelegantly) the eloquent description above regarding the consequences of ignoring privacy. For us, privacy serves not only as a bulwark against threats to individual liberty and society as we know it, but also as a cornerstone of a thriving economy rife with innovation.

There has long been and continues to be roiling societal debates on the topic of privacy. Every reader of this book will come with their own conception of why privacy is important. What do you see as a threat to privacy? How significant are those threats? And most importantly, what role will your technology play in shaping the world in which those threats exist? If you are reading this book, then you have probably asked yourself these questions and, in your own way, reached the same conclusion we have: privacy is important.

Proceeding from that premise, we then assert that engineers can and should take privacy into account when designing and building technology. There is a long history of interaction between policy and technology that demonstrates just how important a role engineers can play. Thinking carefully about the architecture of privacy ...