Alan Rubel and Ryan Biava, A Framework for Comparing Privacy States

Comment by: Judith DeCew

PLSC 2013

Workshop draft abstract:

This paper develops a framework for analyzing and comparing privacy and privacy protections across (inter alia) time, place, and polity and for examining factors that affect privacy and privacy protection. This framework provides a way to describe precisely aspects of privacy and context and a flexible vocabulary and notation for such descriptions and comparisons. Moreover, it links philosophical and conceptual work on privacy to social science and policy work and accommodates different conceptions of the nature and value of privacy. The paper begins with an outline of the framework. It then refines the view by describing a hypothetical application. Finally, it applies the framework to a real-world privacy issue—campaign finance disclosure laws in the U.S. and in France. The paper concludes with an argument that the framework offers important advantages to privacy scholarship and for privacy policy makers.