Can Network Science Help Re-Write the Privacy Playbook?

Abstract

Thresholds for privacy protections are anchored around the principle of 'reasonable expectation of privacy' (REP) which explicitly or implicitly underpins institutional privacy controls- laws, regulations, industry standards, private agreements. The incumbent standard for measuring and applying REP is obsolete and contemporary cases and controversies shine light on our need for a new model. This legacy is largely anchored in the delineation between public and private spaces (closely related is the third-party doctrine ), which broadly holds that what one knowingly exposes to the public loses any expectation that it is deserving of protection under the law.

We lack a consistent, objective measurement for assessing reasonable expectation of privacy and need to realign standards and their applications to more empirically reflect the contours of the Internetwork environment in which the privacy risks occur and privacy interests need protection. This article proposes a new way to domesticate REP by using models from network science.

Keywords: reasonable expectation of privacy, network science, privacy law