S3D Distinguished Speaker Series: Helen Nissenbaum
February 15, 2023
12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. ET
TCS Hall 358
Speaker: Helen Nissenbaum, professor of Information Science and founding director of the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, NYC
Talk Title: Privacy as Contextual Integrity: Challenging Practice and Challenged by it
Abstract: The theory of contextual integrity (CI) defines privacy as appropriate flow of personal information, answering the need for a concept of privacy that is meaningful to ordinary people, explains privacy's place as an ethical value, and underscores why it deserves protection through regulation and technology. Roughly two decades ago, when formulating CI, Nissenbaum argued that it meets all three of these benchmarks while releasing privacy from the grips of one-dimensional conceptions, including, control over information about ourselves, stoppage of flow (secrecy), and the fetishization of specific, “sensitive” attributes (e.g. identity, health.) Nissenbaum's talk steps through several of the key ideas constituting contextual integrity. It also showcases a range of applications of contextual integrity, which have emerged since its early formulations, revealing the theory's strengths, exposing areas of need, and pointing to avenues of further development.
Bio: Helen Nissenbaum is a professor of Information Science and founding director of the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, NYC. Her work on ethical, and political dimensions of digital technologies spans issues such as privacy, bias in digital systems, trust online, ethics in design, and accountability in computational and algorithmic systems.
Prof. Nissenbaum’s publications, which include the books, Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest, with Finn Brunton (MIT Press, 2015), Values at Play in Digital Games, with Mary Flanagan (MIT Press, 2014), and Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life (Stanford, 2010), have been translated into seven languages, including Polish, Chinese, and Portuguese. Recipient of the 2014 Barwise Prize of the American Philosophical Association and the IACAP Covey Award for computing, ethics, and philosophy, Prof. Nissenbaum has contributed to privacy-enhancing free software, TrackMeNot (against profiling of Web search histories) and AdNauseam (against profiling based on ad clicks).
Nissenbaum holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University and a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and Mathematics from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.