Let's Recommon IT

Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life

Nissenbaum, Helen (2010). Stanford Law Books (Stanford University Press)

Threads: Privacy, Institutions

Summary

Argues that privacy is not about keeping information secret or dividing life into public and private. It is about information flowing appropriately for its context. Each social setting (health care, work, school, family) has norms about what information flows, to whom, and under what conditions. A privacy violation happens when a flow breaks those norms. Nissenbaum calls this framework contextual integrity.

Why it’s useful here

  • The theory of privacy that fits community tech. On a shared server, the question isn’t “is this data private?” It’s “should this admin see this information for this purpose?”
  • Fits closely with IAD’s information rules. Contextual norms are institutions, so they can be written in ADICO form. Example: “Admins must not read members’ files except to restore a requested backup.”
  • Explains why “I have nothing to hide” misses the point: harmless data becomes harmful when it moves to the wrong context.

Key ideas

  • Contextual integrity: privacy as appropriate flow, judged against context-specific norms
  • Parameters of an information flow: sender, recipient, subject, information type, transmission principle
  • Critique of the public/private dichotomy
  • brunton-nissenbaum-2015-obfuscation.md
  • ostrom-2005-understanding-institutional-diversity.md
  • crawford-ostrom-1995-grammar-of-institutions.md
  • viljoen-2021-relational-theory-of-data-governance.md

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