IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020 - 85

Most commonly-held, public concepts of privacy center around the notion of personal/individual/human rights with respect to information
protection as well as the laws and regulations
applied to organizations in a "top-down" enforcement of these rights. This dynamic is perceived
as either incident-driven (for example, consumer
notification laws in response to a plethora of corporate and government data breaches); or,
consumer-driven (a response by policy makers
to public pressure and/or an increased, albeit
generalized, sense of anxiety from voting
constituencies).
These notions of privacy are not per se inaccurate or disingenuous but rather are incomplete and oddly inverted. In fact, privacy is a
"ground-up" dynamic (not "top-down"). It can
and often does derive from incidents or anxieties. But the origins of these anxieties emanate
from something much deeper: something that
goes to the very roots of a civilization; to the
core of a national or regional society and of cultural identity itself.
Privacy is the collective expression of an
entire community, nation, and/or region on a single issue. It is the logical, sequential (and oftentimes predictable) product of an extended
history of social, economic, and political factors.
These factors determine not just how people
view personal information and its protection but
how they see their lives, businesses, economies,
and societies as a whole relative to information
protection (and how information protection is
managed relative to these factors). Privacy is a
vision of how information should be handled in
a manner that is culturally consistent. Privacy is
culture!
If real privacy protection is to succeed then it
must be culturally authentic. It must address the
underlying social concerns of information abuse
and data negligence as these offenses are defined
by the society; not as defined by others on behalf
of the society; nor as exerted by the society itself
on otherwise unsuspecting entities who may
reside outside of the geographic boundaries of
that society.
While the scale of "PiC" may appear too
intimidating to grasp, consider that privacy is
expressed not only in external environments but
in internal environments as well. For example:

March/April 2020

within an organization or company, including
the groups and the individuals that work inside
the organization and/or for the company. These
individuals and groups, indeed this organization,
each hold concerns, convictions, assumptions,
and expectations of privacy.
Your own perception of privacy is not composed in isolation. It is established by the communities within which you live and work. It is
further shaped-consciously and subconsciously-by events, experiences, interactions,
conversations, and communications that you
observe, absorb, and/or participate in directly.
All of these factors combine to create a perception of privacy that is, beyond anything else, a
culturally driven perception. Your privacy perception is the direct result of your culture.

BECOMING A JEDI MASTER
In September 2018, I presented the keynote
address at the first summit of the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (DAAC), a coalition of
the leading marketing, advertising, and media
trade associations from across the country. The
DAAC board consists of Canadian business leaders who understand privacy and are committed
to effective consumer protections. Thus, the perfect audience before which to present a revealing takes on "privacy as culture."
My presentation was entitled, "The Last Jedi:
Why the Future of Privacy Belongs to Canada." I
used a science fiction metaphor (the "Jedi
Knights" characters from the "Star Wars" film
anthology) to tell my story: casting the Canadian
federal and provincial privacy commissioners-
along with leading professionals from across the
Canadian privacy community-as galactic warriors who represent a "new hope" to address
both the threats and opportunities in the "data
galaxy of the future."
"The Last Jedi" advanced the thesis that
Canada's privacy oversight model is uniquely and
exclusively qualified to become the global model
for the future; and, most especially, a model for
emerging economies to consider as they seek to
create strong privacy oversight for the first time
and in concert with their economic aspirations.
Canada's is the only privacy oversight model
in the world that actually balances technology

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020