Contextual integrity

Contextual integrity is a theory of privacy developed by Helen Nissenbaum and presented in her book Privacy In Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. It comprises four essential descriptive claims:

  • Privacy has to do with appropriate flows of information.
  • Appropriate information flows are those that conform with contextual information norms.
  • Contextual informational norms involve five independent parameters: data subject, sender, recipient, information type, and transmission principle.
  • Conceptions of privacy are based on ethical concerns that evolve over time.

The theory of contextual integrity seeks to define, clarify, and organize conceptions of privacy in a manner that is relevant even in evolving information environments. When applied, contextual integrity serves to illuminate a range of concerns to consider when designing systems, making decisions, or establishing policy that implicate flows of information and information privacy. It provides a framework for distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate information flows, and thus for making ethical decisions and avoiding privacy violations as the development of new technologies enables novel flows of information.

This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.