Privacy: Front and Center

In the 10 years since IEEE Security & Privacy´s initial launch, privacy has moved from being a side story occasionally covered in the newspaper to a central issue of our times. With the Internet, through the rise of online social networks, tracking technologies such as cookies and Web beacons, and the sharing of data with third parties, and the government´s increasing use of surveillance mechanisms such as closed-circuit television, wiretapping, and location tracking, almost everyone experiences far less privacy than they did just a decade ago. But at the same time, governments and industry are taking much more of an interest in privacy protection than they did when IEEE Security & Privacy first appeared, particularly because consumers adopt personalized services in large numbers. In this roundtable, five privacy leaders discuss some recent concerns: Ann Cavoukian, Ontario´s privacy commissioner, Alan Davidson, a recent head of Google´s US public policy office, Ed Felten, who recently served a term as chief technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission, Marit Hansen, deputy privacy and information commissioner of Land Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and Anna Slomovic, chief privacy officer at Equifax.