Big Data: Catalyst for a Privacy Conversation

This week, the Indiana Law Review released my short article on privacy and big data that I prepared after the journal’s spring symposium. Law and policy appear on the verge of redefining how they understand privacy, and data collectors and privacy advocates are trying to present a path forward. The article discusses the rise of big data and the role of privacy in both the Fourth Amendment and consumer contexts. It explores how the dominant conceptions of privacy as secrecy and as control are increasingly untenable, leading to calls to focus on data use or respect the context of collection. I quickly argue that the future of privacy will have to be built upon a foundation of trust—between individuals and the technologies that will be watching and listening. I was especially thrilled to see the article highlighted by The New York Times’ Technology Section Scuttlebot.

Leave a Reply