Future-Proofing Privacy: Time for an Ethical Introspection?

When trying to establish whether privacy is dead or whether it is merely evolving, we may very well be asking the wrong question. While there is considerable evidence that the concept of privacy is undergoing a sea change in the eyes of both individuals and policy makers, it could be argued that this is merely an expression of a much more fundamental issue that underpins the technological, political and economic changes we have witnessed over the past decade. It is true that anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals, both as citizens and consumers, no longer value their privacy the way they once did. Many claim that this is true in particular for younger people who seem increasingly comfortable with sharing even intimate details about themselves and their life with others, including a much wider range of “others” than their parents’ generation would have done. Nevertheless, successive studies have shown that the wish for control over one’s own information remains high with, for example, 78 per cent of respondents to a 2011 EU survey on privacy believing that their specific approval should be required before any kind of information about them is collected and processed. This article assesses the likely reasons for internet users increasing lack of trust in online providers' willingness and ability to keep their personal information secure and to use it only for purposes of which users are aware and which they have approved. It asks what the future for privacy and data protection law should look like and proposes that the existing defensive discourse around data protection should be replaced with a positive agenda for privacy based on an ethical enquiry into the kind of personal data processing that we, as a society, believe should be permitted.