Carnegie Mellon University
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Emerging Technologies and Privacy Issues

  1. Overview
  2. Human recognition and identification
  3. Ubiquitous video
  4. Ubiquitous data sharing
  5. Information capturing tools
  6. Positioning technology
  7. Personal care

1. Human recognition and identification  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • B. Civil liberties, illegal search
  • C. Medical privacy
  • D. Employment, workplace privacy
  • Face recognition software is not accurate (not an adequate guard).
  • Consequences of recognizing the wrong person.
  • Tracking identified, innocent people through daily life
2. Ubiquitous video  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • B. Civil liberties, illegal search
  • D. Employment, workplace privacy
  • Capturing intimacy and personal communications
  • Tracking unidentified people, automobiles without consent
  • Capturing unidentified people, who are exhibiting no suspicious behavior, but who may be subsequently identified
3. Ubiquitous data sharing  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • B. Civil liberties, illegal search
  • F. Copyright law
  • Erosion of civil liberty protection.
  • Erosion of illegal search protections because law-enforcement can “mine” cases from collected data.
  • Patient privacy is at risk by additional sharing of identified information with law enforcement, which may render healthcare less effective.
  • Detect social interactions of people.
  • Access to uncontrolled and unprecedented amounts of information on identified individuals.
  • Collected data can be used for other government purposes
4. Information capturing tools  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • D. Employment, workplace privacy
  • E. Educational records privacy
  • F. Copyright law
  • RADAR: Revealing sensitive information about the user while communicating with others.
  • RADAR: Not allowing specifications for or enforcing privacy preferences
  • RADAR: to enable research, needs access to archives of personal email messages
  • Sharing information beyond the control of the user
  • Revealing sensitive information about others whose information is captured.
  • Recording others without their consent and providing no opt-out option
  • Speech recognition: Increased number of wiretaps due to reduced effort for transcription.
5. Positioning technology  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • B. Civil liberties, illegal search
  • D. Employment, workplace privacy
  • Privacy loss due to associations between tag and holder
  • Publicly available tag output may not be sufficiently anonymous to protect holder privacy
  • Tags on medical products may compromise patient or medical privacy
  • Tags or GPS in workplace objects or company vehicles raises issues of workplace privacy
  • GPS information shared with the automotive industry without customer control or awareness
  • GPS information used to enforce virtual speed control when driving
  • Law enforcement tracking of individuals by mobile phone without search warrant protection
6. Personal care  
  • A. Video, wiretapping and surveillance
  • B. Civil liberties, illegal search
  • C. Medical privacy
  • D. Employment, workplace privacy
  • E. Educational records privacy
  • Doctor/Patient Confidentiality
  • Workplace privacy issues arise for staff
  • Bodily privacy issues arise for patients
  • Patient’s consent and opt-out option of room-wide monitoring
  • Information captured on visitors and others
  • Captured information shared without consent.


More on Technology Group Overview, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


Summer 2003 [webmaster@dataprivacylab.org] Privacy Technology Center