Knowing Me, Knowing You – Profiling, Privacy and the Public Interest

Abstract

There is nothing like predicting the future and the future might turn out to be nothing like we predict. Even so, it is a fair assumption that, as the twenty-first century unfolds, we will know a great deal more about ourselves but, equally, others will know a great deal more about us. To put to a broader use the evocative terms of contrast employed by Serge Gutwirth and Paul De Hert, we might say that in the foreseeable future, there will be rather more transparency and rather less opacity. When I say that there will be this shift from opacity to transparency, I mean not only that more raw data about ourselves and others will be available but that this data will translate into meaningful statements that impact our agency-based interests (particularly our interests in autonomy and privacy). Such is the prospect of profiling. A recurring theme of the essays in this book is that profiling promises benefits but, simultaneously represents various threats. For some, a future in which we might know more about ourselves will be a cause for concern; the transparency of a personal profile (for example, a profile of one’s genetic make-up) will seem less than welcome. It is not simply that when one’s profile is good it is good and when it is bad it is bad, some will see any such attempt at profiling as a violation of the dignity of human life. For others – which I believe to be a larger group the principal cause for concern is not that we might know more about ourselves but that others, especially the State and powerful interests in the private sector, might come to know more about us. For this larger group, it is the loss of personal opacity and increased transparency relative to others that is the worrying prospect. Prompted by the papers in this volume, my focus is the second rather than the first of these concerns. There are two general questions that I want to pose and pursue,