DREAMIN MAN: the role of idealism and pragmatisms in privacy advocacy
on june 19th, i had the good fortune of being invited to give a dinner speech to all of the speakers at UofA’s annual access and privacy conference, performing at the speed of change. although i fully understood the drill – they wanted a lighthearted and entertaining 20 minute speil – something happened to me on the plane that turned into a jerry mcguire moment. i decided instead to take a more heartfelt look at a difficult and often unaddressed set of issues in privacy advocacy.
many people who attended have urged me to post the speech, which i was
originally reluctant to do both because it was a kind of off-the-cuff
“moment”, and because a better, more rigorous version of it would have
avoided its central problem, which is attaching only a few faces to the
various positions rather than surveying a wide variety of people and
positions. i reiterate here that none of this was ever meant to be
about the people espousing the positions, rather to use famous examples
in order to raise interesting and important questions about the
appropriate roles of idealism and pragmatism.
ontario information and privacy commissioner
ann cavoukian was kind enough to provide me with some very useful
feedback on my ideas in spite of the fact that some of my remarks about
her position were critical and, as i put it in the address, “visceral”.
she is a total mensch.
among many other things, she warned me about the danger of citing the
statistics reported by edward greenspan, which she claims are in “wild
dispute” and, in some cases, “unequivocally incorrect”. ann also
rightly pointed out that my general argument about the politics
inherent in some technologies cuts both ways and will therefore work
against idealist approaches in many circumstances as well. she also
suggested that “privacy by design” can be used in some cases to
re-design the politics of technological systems.
i decided not to alter the original text and am trying to decide
whether my jerry mcguire moment ought to be transformed into an
academic study. let me know what you think !!
if you would like to read the original text, it is here
for those interested in listening to the speech, you can find it here