Adam D. Moore (Washington) "Privacy, Security, and Surveillance: WikiLeaks, Big Data, and the New Accountability"

Abstract: This presentation considers the "new accountability" forced upon corporations and governments by the "big data" movement and information sharing sites like WikiLeaks. I argue that accessing and sharing sensitive information about individuals, corporations, and governments is, in the typical case, morally suspect -- we simply do not owe each other the level of information access promised by 'big data" or WikiLeaks. Arguably, at this time individuals are paying the cost of this information sharing movement.  Nevertheless, the wrongness of making the average citizen an information target, subject to the ever watchful gaze of some big brother, is mitigated by two factors.

First, in democratic societies and to the extent that the information published is important for accountability, we have a right to know much of the information published.  Second, this sort of sharing is forcing a realignment of power. For decades corporations and governments have been able to collect, store, and share information about ordinary citizens while walling off access to their own information. Sharing sites like WikiLeaks are changing this balance of power. And while it is the case that "two wrongs don’t make a right" for this slogan to be true one has to acknowledge the first wrong.  Perhaps once we are all information targets, equal in our inability to protect our own informational privacy, we will be in a position to adopt justified information sharing practices and practices of accountability.

This talk is presented by ViPS, the Institute for Values in Policy and Science and is part of the 2013-2014 Public Lecture Series in Privacy.