Hartzog on Privacy in Public

Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern University School of Law and College of Computer and Information Science; Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society) has posted The Public Information Fallacy on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: The concept of privacy in “public” information or acts is a perennial topic for debate. It has given privacy law fits. People struggle to reconcile the notion of protecting information that has been made public with traditional accounts of privacy. As a result, successfully labeling information as public often functions as a permission slip for surveillance and personal data practices. It has also given birth to a significant and persistent misconception — that public information is an established and objective concept. In this article, I argue that the “no privacy in public” justification is misguided because nobody even knows what “public” even means. It has no set definition in law or policy.…

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