PETs and their users: a critical review of the potentials and limitations of the privacy as confidentiality paradigm

“Privacy as confidentiality” has been the dominant paradigm in computer science privacy research. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) that guarantee confidentiality of personal data or anonymous communicationhave resulted from such research. The objective of this paper is to show thatsuch PETs are indispensable but are short of being the privacy solutions theysometimes claim to be given current day circumstances. Using perspectivesfrom surveillance studies we will argue that the computer scientists’ conceptionof privacy through data or communication confidentiality is techno-centricand displaces end-user perspectives and needs in surveillance societies. Wewill further show that the perspectives from surveillance studies also demanda critical review for their human-centric conception of information systems. Last, we rethink the position of PETs in a surveillance society and argue for thenecessity of multiple paradigms for addressing privacy concerns in informationsystems design