Privacy Article

Introduction: Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma

Vol. 126 No. 7 During the past decade, the problems involving information privacy – the ascendance of Big Data and fusion centers, the tsunami of data security breaches, the rise of Web 2.0, the growth of behavioral marketing, and the proliferation of tracking technologies – have become thornier. Policymakers have proposed and passed significant new regulation in the United States and abroad, yet the basic approach to protecting privacy has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s. Under the current approach, the law provides people with a set of rights to enable them to make decisions about how to manage their data. These rights consist primarily of rights to notice, access, and consent regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data. The goal of this bundle of rights is to provide people with control over their personal data, and through this control people can decide for themselves how to weigh the costs and benefits of the collection, use, or disclosure of their information. I will refer to this approach to privacy regulation as “privacy self-management.”