The Epistemic Account of Privacy

Blaauw, Martijn

doi:10.1017/epi.2013.12

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In itself, it says nothing about whether privacy is valuable, whether privacy rights exist, or what it takes to violate privacy rights if they do exist. (II) According to the CT, B must know f about A in order for A's privacy to be diminished relative to B and relative to f. Recent critics have pointed out that weaker epistemic relations than knowledge are sufficient for privacy to be diminished, and that the stronger the epistemic relation is, the more privacy is diminished (Blaauw 2013;Kappel 2013;Fallis 2013). I find this critique compelling, but I will bracket it for now, since it is fairly easy to see how a weaker epistemic relation can be replaced with 'knows' in the definition without turning it into something that is not a control theory.…”

Section: The Control Theory (Ct)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A crucial motivation behind the AT is the idea that control does no work in determining whether someone has privacy or not. All that matters, according to the AT, is whether someone actually accesses f. It has recently been argued that the access in question is best understood as an actual epistemic access, and that the degree to which A's privacy is diminished depends inter alia on how strong the epistemic relation is between B and f (Blaauw 2013;Matheson 2007;Kappel 2013;Fallis 2013). Nothing of importance hangs on whether this specification of the AT is true, but for present purposes, it is helpful to think of the access in question as an actual epistemic access.…”

Section: The Access Theory (At)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several theorists have recently endorsed altered versions of this theory. See e.g (Blaauw 2013),(Kappel 2013), and(Fallis 2013)…”

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confidence: 99%

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An Indirect Argument for the Access Theory of Privacy

Mainz

2021

Res Publica

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In this paper, I offer an indirect argument for the Access Theory of privacy. First, I develop a new version of the rival Control Theory that is immune to all the classic objections against it. Second, I show that this new version of the Control Theory collapses into the Access Theory. I call the new version the 'Negative Control Account'. Roughly speaking, the classic Control Theory holds that you have privacy if, and only if, you can control whether other people know personal information about you. Critics of the Control Theory often give counterexamples, where privacy is either not diminished even though the claimant has lost control, or where privacy is diminished even though the claimant is in control. I argue that none of these alleged counterexamples work against the Negative Control Account. However, this is not a victory for the control theorist, because the Negative Control Account collapses into the Access Theory. The paper thus adds to the recent trend in the literature of favoring the Access Theory over the Control Theory.

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Section: The Control Theory (Ct)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Access Theory (At)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Indirect Argument for the Access Theory of Privacy

Mainz

2021

Res Publica

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“…13 Some recent accounts understand privacy in terms of whether others know or can make reasonable inferences about a person. 14,15 …”

Section: Privacy’s Ethical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy and confidentiality in pragmatic clinical trials

et al. 2015

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With pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) an opportunity exists to answer important questions about the relative risks, burdens, and benefits of therapeutic interventions. However, concerns about protecting the privacy of this information are significant and must be balanced with the imperative to learn from the data gathered in routine clinical practice. Traditional privacy protections for research uses of identifiable information rely disproportionately on informed consent or authorizations, based on a presumption that this is necessary to fulfill ethical principles of respect for persons. But frequently the ideal of informed consent is not realized in its implementation. Moreover, the principle of respect for persons,—which encompasses their interests in health information privacy,—can be honored through other mechanisms. Data anonymization also plays a role in protecting privacy but is not suitable for all research, particularly PCTs. In this paper we explore both the ethical foundation and regulatory framework intended to protect privacy in PCTs. We then review examples of novel approaches to respecting persons in research that may have the added benefit of honoring patient privacy considerations.

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“…Jeroen de Ridder (2013) has argued there is nothing inherently wrong with keeping secrets. Finally, there is Martijn Blaauw's work in “The Epistemic Account of Privacy,” in which he argues that secrecy has to do with the hiding of facts (Blaauw 2013b).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Secrecy and Conspiracy

Dentith¹,

Orr²

2017

Episteme

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In the literature on conspiracy theories, the least contentious part of the academic discourse would appear to be what we mean by a “conspiracy”: a secretive plot between two or more people toward some end. Yet what, exactly, is the connection between something being a conspiracy and it being secret? Is it possible to conspire without also engaging in secretive behavior? To dissect the role of secrecy in conspiracies – and thus contribute to the larger debate on the epistemology of conspiracy theories – we define the concepts of “conspiracy,” “conspirator,” and “secret,” and argue that while conspirators might typically be thought to commit to keeping secrets once their conspiracy is underway, the idea that conspiracies are necessarily secretive to start with is not as obvious as previously thought.

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The Epistemic Account of Privacy

Cited by 12 publications

References 10 publications

An Indirect Argument for the Access Theory of Privacy

An Indirect Argument for the Access Theory of Privacy

Privacy and confidentiality in pragmatic clinical trials

Secrecy and Conspiracy

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