Helen Nissenbaum
Professor at Cornell Tech; originator of contextual integrity
Helen Nissenbaum's theory of contextual integrity reframed privacy: what matters is not secrecy but whether information flows match the norms of the context it was shared in. Privacy in Context (2010) underpins much current thinking on data use, and Obfuscation (2015, with Finn Brunton) is a practical guide to resistance.
Key arguments & positions
- Argues privacy is about appropriate information flow in context, not secrecy — her theory of contextual integrity.
- Holds that consent to share data in one setting is not consent to reuse it in another, which undercuts most "it was public" defenses of training-data collection.
- Argues obfuscation — deliberate noise — is a legitimate tool for people with little power over data collection.
Accomplishments
- Professor of information science at Cornell Tech; director of the Digital Life Initiative.
- Originated contextual integrity, now widely used in privacy law and policy analysis.
- Author of Privacy in Context (2010) and, with Finn Brunton, Obfuscation (2015).
Papers & key writings
Links
In the library
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