The Architecture of Privacy

Part I. Getting Started

You have decided to build a new technology that processes data about people. Where do you start? In Part I, we walk you through the initial steps that lay the foundation upon which your privacy-protective framework will be built. Chapter 1 defines the concept of privacy and the critical role of the engineer in shaping that concept through technology. We then raise some preliminary questions regarding when and how data is collected, which can be explored in great depth in privacy literature. While our book largely focuses on the management of data after it has been collected, data-collection considerations themselves do shape privacy architecture. We therefore provide a high-level discussion of data collection in Chapters 2 and 3. Finally, protecting data privacy necessarily involves ensuring that data is secure. Since the literature on information security techniques is substantial, Chapter 4 provides a basic discussion of the topic as background.