“People are worried about the ease of the collection of personal data, its large-scale storage and easy retrieval, and about who can get access to it.” This is what John Weckert already wrote in his Computer and Information Ethics back in 1997. Nowadays the increasing technological enhancements pose a greater threat to privacy issues than ever before.

After the massive invasion of information and communication technology (ICT) into homes and workplaces it is also very likely that mobile ICT will change our behavior in public spaces and public spaces themselves. Already now, one can learn about upcoming changes by observing citizens’ communication habits in public spaces like parks, public transport, or restaurants. Calling, for instance, friends with a cell phone in public spaces is quite common – existing or future technologies will spread the use of information and communication services. Technology concepts like Ubiquitous Computing and Pervasive Computing are on the rise, whose application enable citizen to use content and services everywhere and anytime by embedding computational devices in everyday objects and places. These services inherit that personal related information massively are produced, processed, and exchanged between various kinds of devices. All those technologies, which are large systems of artifacts realized with different technologies, can be used alone to provide information and communication services. But they also could be combined to realize an intelligent and computerized environment combined with an extensive storage of data. In that way Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing - and its used technologies like RFID and UMTS – change the meaning of privacy and the meaning of public space. Hence, these technologies cross physical, individual and social boundaries by creating, for instance, consumer profiles, which do include not only what people have purchased, but also where, when and by whom these items are used. Consequently, by using ubiquitous computing in everyday objects and settings the conditions of people’s lives will be affected – intentional and unintentional. In a Ubiquitous Computing environment the risk to loose personal information or being spied in public spaces is much higher than ever before.

Although we would like to scrutinize the impact of mobile ICT on public spaces at first it will be necessary to think about privacy. Many concepts of privacy were developed and discussed more or less from a philosophical and of course a legal stance. However, there are other notions of privacy that could be referred to. For instance, privacy is mentioned from a psychological perspective because different types and functions of psychological privacy affect individuals’ behavior (e.g. Pedersen, 1997; 1999) and it is very likely that psychological aspects play a major role in the change of individual and societal attitudes towards privacy. Moreover, most currently discussed concepts of privacy strongly are tied up to western thinking and culture (e.g. Newell, 1998; Kaya, Weber, 2003; Olinger, Britz, Olivier, 2005) and therefore are difficult to be generalized.

For our purposes we will focus on informational privacy (e.g. Spinello, 2003: 143), which is already addressed in Samuel D. Warren und Louis D. Brandeis’ article ‘The Right to Privacy’ published in 1890. Here privacy is defined as the right to be let alone: “To have privacy is to be left alone and invisible to public scrutiny” (Tunick, 2001: 520). Now, to protect privacy, either all other persons have to refrain from intruding our private realms or one is able to control the flow of information about oneself. Nevertheless, often it is inevitable that others gain access to personal related information, for instance, at the workplace, in public transport, or in restaurants. Obviously, locations differ due to the number of persons present or to their knowledge about each other. However, being in public one cannot know which and how many persons will have information about oneself. That is why we do not behave the same way in public as in private space – we adjust our public behavior to the expectations of others and to social and moral conventions of the embedding society. Generally speaking, in public space we try to control our behavior in order to control the flow of personal related information about ourselves.

Now, ICT massively reduces one’s informational privacy. Thus, the advantages (mobile) ICT provides to us could be overridden by the disadvantages of infringements into our privacy, as Leonhardt and Magee (1998: 52) stress: ‘[…] location services will often become repositories of potentially sensitive personal and corporate information. Where you are and who you are with are closely correlated with what you are doing.’ Thus, we assume that Ubiquitous technologies may change the behavior of a person to act in her own way, because it is now even more difficult to control the flow of personal information. In order to adequately react to our requests, service and content providers continuously have to know about our actions, behavior, and lifestyle. Then, users potentially will change their behavior according to own attitudes, social norms they believe they have to meet, perceived behavioral control and moral obligations.

Debates about informational privacy already show strong relations of space and privacy: it cannot be guaranteed everywhere in real space. However, it seems that humans need shelter against public attention and social control (e.g. Cooke, 1999) and only private spaces can provide that last resort. But also in public spaces we assume that our behavior will not be recorded all the time. Now, mobile ICT can change the notations of public spaces. It is very likely that the implementation of ICT in public spaces will change our behavior extensively. Such technology can be used to track us and to collect data about us, our locations, and the whereabouts of actions. Concurrently, we will not know exactly who can access such information. We will loose control over the flow of personal related information and thus won’t have informational privacy anymore. Thus, Technology has an impact on the characteristics of public spaces. For instance, CCTV in public spaces is quite common and can turn public spaces into quasi-public spaces, which are no more accessibly for everybody. Even history shows that surveillance always changed citizens’ behavior in public spaces – that is just the aim of surveillance. Now, mobile ICT will help to create an environment, in which no difference of surveillance and attention by service providers can be drawn and in which there will be no last resort for privacy. Thus, the notion of public space, like Habermas (1991) assumed, as a place where free individuals meet and decide autonomously about their own behavior and decisions, is threatened.

Under the assumption that ICTs have an influence on public spaces, e.g. the practice of moving through public spaces and the perception of privacy, we aim to evaluate with our proposed talk questions related to privacy and personal data security and the consequences for public spaces. Privacy and its protection is not a matter of technology. Therefore, it is essential to include an ethical view and a reflection on social effects when talking about mobile ICTs.

References:

Brown, K. (2000), The Internet Privacy Debate. International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, 6, http://www.ijclp.org/6_2001/ijclp_webdoc_11_6_2001.html, last visited 12/1/2006.

Cooke, M. (1999), A space of one’s own: autonomy, privacy, liberty. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 25 (1), 23–53.

Habermas, J. (1991), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kaya, N. and Weber, M. J. (2003), Cross-cultural differences in the perception of crowding and privacy regulation: American and Turkish students. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23 (3), 301‑9.

Leonhardt, U. and Magee, J. (1998), Security Considerations for a Distributed Location Service. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 6 (1), 51-70.

Newell, 1998; , P. B. (1998), A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Privacy Definitions and Functions: A Systems Approach. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18 (4), 357-71.

Olinger, H. N., Britz, J. J. and Olivier, M. S. (2005), Western privacy and ubuntu: influence in the forthcoming data privacy bill, in Ethics of New Information Technology, Proceedings of CEPE 2005 (ed.   P. Brey, F. Grodzinsky, L. Introna), CTIT, Enschede/The Netherlands.

Pedersen, D. M. (1997), Psychological Functions of Privacy. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17 (2), 147-56.

Pedersen, D. M. (1999), Model for Types of Privacy by Privacy Functions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19 (4), 397-405.

Spinello, R.A. (2003), Cyberethics. Morality and Law in Cyberspace. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury.

Tunick, M. (2001), Does Privacy Undermine Community? The Journal of Value Inquiry, 35 (4), 517-34.

Weinreb, L. L. (2000), The Right to Privacy. Social Philosophy and Policy, 17 (2), 25-44.

      One will find different attitudes towards the legal status of privacy. For example, Kenneth Brown (2000: 1) emphasizes that “privacy and the “the right to privacy” are loosely defined.” He adds that from an US point of view the term privacy is neither defined in the Bill of Rights nor in the amendments of the Constitution. Contrary to this skeptical view Lloyd Weinreb (2000: 25) holds that there cannot be any doubt that a right to privacy exists in US legislation. In the EU one will find legislation that shall protect personal related information.