No Cookies For You!: Evaluating The Promises Of Big Tech’s ‘Privacy-Enhancing’ Techniques
We examine three common principles underlying a slew of ’privacy-enhancing’ techniques recently deployed or scheduled for deployment by big tech companies: (1) limiting access to personal data by third parties, (2) using inferences and minimizing use and retention of raw data, and (3) ensuring personal data never leaving users’ device. Our Article challenges these principles, but not on the grounds that techniques offered to implement them fail to achieve their stated goals. Instead, we argue that the principles themselves fall short when the privacy-enhancing technique does not address privacy-violating behavior. Through philosophical analysis and technical scrutiny, we reveal the misalignment between the principles and a sound conception of privacy. We reinforce our findings empirically with a series of factorial vignette user studies, which demonstrate a surprising gap between the principles and users’ actual privacy expectations. The most general conclusion that can be derived from our findings is that any effort to create successful privacy-enhancing systems must start with the explicit adoption of a meaningful conception of privacy.
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Kirsten Martin, Helen Nissenbaum, and Vitaly Shmatikov
Kirsten Martin, William P. and Hazel B. White Center Professor of Technology Ethics, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame; Helen Nissenbaum, Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Professor of Information Science, Cornell Tech at Cornell University; Vitaly Shmatikov, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell Tech at Cornell University. We would like to thank the participants at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (2023), Digital Life Initiative Workshop at Cornell Tech, and the SPILab at the University of Michigan School of Information for their constructive feedback.