Emerging Technologies, Emerging Privacy Issues

Background

New data losses of millions of individuals’ personal information occur almost daily (Albrecht, 2002; Clarke, 1999; CNet, 2006). As losses amass, the realization grows that personal information privacy (PIP) is no longer managed by either individuals or the companies that collect the data. Research to date proposes that PIP is the responsibility of individuals’ forging contracts with corporations for protection of their data (Smith, 2004), that it is the responsibility of government to protect the individual from corporate abuses (OECD, 2000, 2003, 2006; Swire, 1997), or the responsibility of corporations to manage internal use (Cheung et al., 2005; Culnan, 1993; Culnan & Armstrong, 1999; Smith et al. 1996). These views are all corporate-centric but threats have expanded beyond the corporation to its data-sharing partners, resulting in data aggregation and sales that are largely unregulated and uncontrolled (Conger, 2006; Conger et al., 2005).

Dictionary.com has several definitions of privacy as shown in Table 1.