Privacy Implications of Surveillance Systems

This paper presents a model for assessing the privacy „cost‟ of a surveillance system. Surveillance systems collect and provide personal information or observations of people by means of surveillance technologies such as databases, video or location tracking. Such systems can be designed for various purposes, even as a service for those being observed, but in any case they will to some degree invade their privacy. The model provided here can indicate how invasive any particular system may be – and be used to compare the invasiveness of different systems. Applying a functional approach, the model is established by first considering the social function of privacy in everyday life, which in turn lets us determine which different domains will be considered as private, and finally identify the different types of privacy invasion. This underlying model (function – domain – invasion) then serves to explain the ways in which a technology-based surveillance system can affect the privacy of the observed. The model thus identifies a set of general characteristics (dimensions) of surveillance system that will determine the degree of invasiveness. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by analyzing a location-based system for airport passengers developed for a Copenhagen Airport, and the dimensions are used to explain user reactions to different services offered by the system.