Search

Search this site:

Navigation

The subjective value of privacy • Assessing individuals' calculus of costs and benefits in the context of state surveillance

Media
book
Title
The subjective value of privacy • Assessing individuals' calculus of costs and benefits in the context of state surveillance
Author
Antoine Lukas
Edited by
Springer International Publishing
ISBN
978-3-658464-61-5

Internet users, software developers, academics, entrepreneurs – basically everybody is now aware of the importance of considering privacy as a core part of our online experience. User demand, and various national or regional laws, have made privacy a continuously present subject. And privacy is such an all-encompassing, complex topic, the angles from which it can be studied seems never to finish; I recommend computer networking-oriented newcomers to the topic to refer to Brian Kernighan’s excellent work [1]. However, how do regular people –like ourselves, in our many capacities– feel about privacy? Lukas Antoine presents a series of experiments aiming at better understanding how people throughout the world understands privacy, and when is privacy held as more or less important than security in different aspects,

Particularly, privacy is often portrayed as a value set at tension against surveillance, and particularly state surveillance, in the name of security: conventional wisdom presents the idea of privacy calculus. This is, it is often assumed that individuals continuously evaluate the costs and benefits of divulging their personal data, sharing data when they expect a positive net outcome, and denying it otherwise. This framework has been accepted for decades, and the author wishes to challenge it. This book is clearly his doctoral thesis on political sciences, and its contents are as thorough as expected in this kind of product.

The author presents three empirical studies based on cross-survey analysis. The first experiment explores the security justifications for surveillance and how they influence their support. The second one searches whether the stance on surveillance can be made dependent on personal convenience or financial cost. The third study explores whether privacy attitude is context-dependant or can be seen as a stable personality trait. The studies aim to address the shortcomings of published literature in the field, mainly, (a) the lack of comprehensive research on state surveillance, needed or better understanding privacy appreciation, (b) while several studies have tackled the subjective measure of privacy, there is a lack of cross-national studies to explain wide-ranging phenomena, (c) most studies in this regard are based on population-based surveys, which cannot establish causal relationships, (d) a seemingly blind acceptance of the privacy calculus mentioned above, with no strong evidence that it accurately measures people’s motivations for disclosing or withholding their data. The specific take, including the framing of the tension between privacy and surveillance has long been studied, as can be seen in Steven Nock’s 1993 book [2], but as Sannon’s article in 2022 shows [3], social and technological realities require our undertanding to be continuously kept up to date.

The book is full with theoretical references and does a very good job of explaining the path followed by the author. It is, though, a heavy read, and, for people not coming from the social sciences tradition, leads to the occasional feeling of being lost. The conceptual and theoretical frameworks and presented studies are thorough and clear. The author is honest in explaining when the data points at some of his hypotheses being disproven, while others are confirmed.

The aim of the book is for people digging deep into this topic. Personally, I have authored several works on different aspects of privacy (such as a book [4] and a magazine number [5]), but this book did get me thinking on many issues I had not previously considered. Looking for comparable works, I find Friedewald et al.’s 2017 book [6] chapter organization to follow a similar thought line. My only complaint would be that, for the publication as part of its highly prestigious publisher, little attention has been paid to editorial aspects: sub-subsection depth is often excessive and unclear. Also, when publishing monographs based on doctoral works, it is customary to no longer refer to the work as a “thesis” and to soften some of the formal requirements such a work often has, with the aim of producing a more gentle and readable book; this book seems just like the mass-production of an (otherwise very interesting and well made) thesis work.

References: