Doughnut Privacy: A Preliminary Thought Experiment

Abstract

This chapter explores the implications of the “doughnut” model of sustainable economic development for efforts to strike the appropriate balance between surveillance and privacy. Among environmental economists and some city planners, Kate Raworth’s (2017) theory of “doughnut economics” is all the rage. Raworth argues that, in an era when human well-being depends on sustainable development rather than on unlimited growth, economics as a discipline can no longer embrace models of welfare oriented exclusively toward the latter. As an alternative model to the classic upward-trending growth curve, she offers the doughnut: an inner ring consisting of the minimum requirements for human wellbeing, a middle band consisting of the safe and just space for human existence, and an ecological ceiling above which continued growth produces planetary disaster. I will argue, first, that a similarly doughnut-shaped model can advance conceptualization of the appropriate balance(s) between surveillance and privacy, and second, that taking the doughnut model seriously suggests important questions about the uses, forms, and modalities of legitimate surveillance.

Keywords: privacy, surveillance, sustainability

JEL Classification: K19, K29, O31, O33