Understanding Data Privacy Regulations

As the public becomes increasingly concerned with data privacy and policymakers begin to respond with legislation, it’s important for officials, advocates, and developers to work together on solutions to pressing privacy problems. In May 2019, The Harvard Kennedy School’s Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project and New America’s Public Interest Technology (PIT) teams convened a group of over 40 advocates, academics, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and lawyers to exchange expertise and views on personal data privacy regulation.

The roundtable focused on two key questions: How might organizations and legislators collaborate to bridge aspirational privacy principles to product design and development? How might data privacy legislation be more effective to meet user needs?

The new report from TAPP and PIT, Understanding Data Privacy Regulations, aims to synthesize key insights from the convening. It uses four case studies—Salesforce, Mapbox, Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), and Georgetown Ethics Lab—to highlight the nuances of privacy protection within and between organizations.

The report also synthesizes discussions that happened during the TAPP-PIT convening on civil rights and liberties, privacy design, and potential data privacy legislation. Participants talked through the challenges of operationalizing aspirational privacy principles through product development, metrics and strategies for measuring the level of privacy users enjoy in a given system, how product design implies and reinforces a company’s values, and key privacy trade-offs across sectors.

There is a widely-held misconception that Americans are willing to give up their personal information because they feel comfortable with or ambivalent about protecting their privacy. An Annenberg School for Community study at the University of Pennsylvania rejects this premise, arguing that Americans consent to data-collection often because they are resigned to the “inevitability of surveillance and power of marketers to harvest their data.”

This default stance of resignation to privacy trade-offs is unsustainable, both for consumers and companies. Advocates and developers need to help build a more informed, trustworthy, and healthy relationship between individuals, their tech, and their privacy. And policymakers need the tools and resources to craft privacy-protective legislation and regulations that allow people to get the most out of exciting new technologies without harmful trade-offs that compromise their digital security. To learn more, read the full report from TAPP and PIT.