1. Trapped in My Mobility:
Privacy by Design or
Another Catchphrase for
Privacy Lock-in
Mihaela Popescu
Lemi Baruh

2. Privacy By Design?
• Two legal frameworks
– FTC Privacy Framework (March 2012)
– EU Proposed Reforms to Data Protection
Directive of 1995
• Privacy by Design (Ann Cavoukian)
– Incorporation of privacy concerns to every
stage of digital product development
– Compete on the basis of privacy.
– Simplify consumer choice (give the ability to
the consumer to limit the original party to the
transaction from sharing data with a thir

3. Premise
• Exclusive focus on privacy as
data control
• Alternatives?

4. Captive audience
• Justice Douglas, 1952: Situation
when audiences have no choice
but to listen to a message forced
upon them.
• Captive audiences are audiences
without funtional opt-out
mechanisms to aviod situations of
coercive communication.

5. Captive audience (cont)
• Power differential between
communicators and audiences:
–messages “thrust upon” observers
–“a verbal assault”
–“inflame the sensibilities”
– speakers “force [their] message”
–attention is “bludgeoned”

6. Captive audience (cont)
• “particular situations where
people are particularly subject to
unjust and intolerable harassment
and coercion” (Balkin, 1999)
• Coercive situation
• Incurred costs for exit

7. Captive audience
audiences
w/o functional opt-out
mechanisms
to avoid situations of
coercive communication

8. Functional opt-out
mechanisms
used under agreed-upon
expectations of privacy
without significant costs

9. 1. Contextual marketing
as coercive
communication?

10. “Marketing to a segment of
one”
• FTC: Individual autonomy=data
autonomy
– Informed consent over data
collection
• Corporate rhetoric: Desired
communication=better
customization

11. Contextual marketing
• Location + personal history + social
filters + life event triggers
– “The old buying model [asked about
customers] 'When did I buy last? What
did I buy? And how much did I
buy?'…Now, it's about, 'Where am I at
the moment? What is it that I'm
purchasing right now? And with whom
am I conversing at that moment?'”
(Gary S. Laben, KBM Group)

12. Privacy of choice
• Is contextual marketing coercive
communication?
• “autonomy trap” (Zarsky 2004);
Threat to autonomy of choice.
• Imagine for example a Bride to be
waiting in line at the Filene's
Basement

13. 2. Signalling privacy
expectations?

14. Signaling mechanisms
• Social conventions
• Legal tradition: social
expectations of privacy are place-
dependent
• Place as a nexus for signaling
mechanisms

15. Place as signal
• Mobile technologies: Public vs.
private; virtual vs. material; online
vs. offline
• The widening of the gap between
what is "naturally private" and what
is "normatively private"

16. 3. Cost of exit strategies?

17. Privacy as a market product
• FTC: “standardize the format and
the terminology used in privacy
statements so that consumers
can compare the data practices of
different companies and exercise
choices based on privacy
concerns, thereby encouraging
companies to compete on
privacy.”

18. Switching costs
• Lock-ins (Shapiro & Varian,
1999):
– Financial
– Legal
– Technological
– Time investment…
– Social investiment (Sal Humphrey
from the morning section)
• Customization: durable lock-ins,

19. Disincentives for privacy
• Lock-ins=“sticky” relationships
between users and mobile
platforms
• Lock-ins are disincentives for
better privacy (Bonneau &
Preibusch, 2010, 2011)

20. Impact of FTC market logic
• No attempt to break privacy lock-
ins
• Outcome: incentives for
horizontally integrated companies
to standardize privacy policies
across all their services

22. Impact of market logic (cont)
• Increased opt-out costs
• Onus on consumers to identify
comparable services with
friendlier privacy policies

23. Summary of Privacy by
Design
• Limited view of user choice
• Limited user control over
communication boundaries
• Increases user opt-out costs

24. Principles
• Restore user control over
communicative interaction rather than
data
• Define “privacy modes” for mobile
devices
• Design recognizable signals
• Enforce “privacy modes” - Integrate
information about data practices with
choice.