Surveillance & Privacy

The Privacy Paradox: The Privacy Benefits of Privacy Threats

Benjamin Wittes, Jodie Liu
Thursday, May 21, 2015, 11:03 AM
Here’s something a little outside the normal Lawfare fare but which Lawfare readers might find interesting: A new paper we have written about all the privacy benefits we receive from technologies we typically think of as privacy eroding.

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Here’s something a little outside the normal Lawfare fare but which Lawfare readers might find interesting: A new paper we have written about all the privacy benefits we receive from technologies we typically think of as privacy eroding. Entitled “The Privacy Paradox: The Privacy Benefits of Privacy Threats,” and published by Brookings, the paper sets forth the basic idea that the American (and European) privacy debates keep score very badly. When confronted with technologies that give us new privacy with one hand and erode privacy with the other, we tend to pocket the gains without thinking about them while worrying endlessly about the erosions. In this paper, we try to imagine a more rigorous balance sheet---one that includes the privacy benefits of things like searching for sensitive information on Google, reading on your Kindle, online shopping, and getting your porn online. It’s not about NSA, but we hope it is a disruptive look at the larger subject of how our society conceives of privacy as a value.
The 1971 Woody Allen film Bananas contains a scene of cringing comedic embarrassment: Allen is at a newspaper store, trying to buy pornography, and doing so in person makes him acutely conscious of being watched and judged. He flips through some magazines, hoping to disguise his purchase amid others. He then stops and nervously scans the store. A older, stern-countenanced woman stands close by. Turning back to the magazines, he narrates aloud as he gathers his selections.
“I’ll get a copy of Time magazine.” He pauses, shoots a quick glance at the older woman. “I’ll take the Commentary and Saturday Review. And uh, let’s see, Newsweek…”
In between the respectable magazines, he sandwiches his porn selections.


Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Jodie C. Liu formerly researched national security issues at the Brookings Institution as a Ford Foundation Law School Fellow and has worked at the Open Society Foundations in Budapest, Hungary. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2015 and summa cum laude from Columbia College in 2012, with honors in economics.

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