Helen Nissenbaum, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, discussed online privacy and its challenges in her talk, “Why privacy online is different, and why it isn’t,” on Tuesday at the Law School.

Hosted by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, Nissenbaum’s presentation focused on the notion of a transparent privacy policy in which users can choose to give permission to providing information online, called “notice and consent.”

Nissenbaum described the growing online environment as a competitive marketplace for information, in which people are able to engage freely with limited interference by third parties such as government regulators. This environment requires flexibility and innovation to maintain its growth and can be puzzling to comprehend.

“The online environment provides new types of information that we haven’t been used to engaging with,” Nissenbaum said. “Sometimes we just aren’t sure of how to work with this kind of information.”

Other factors that underlie privacy problems and accompany the growth of online communication include new types of actors — the subjects and recipients of information. There are also different modes of capture and distribution of information. Unlike spoken communication, there is no longer a “clear reciprocal flow of information” between speakers, Nissenbaum said.

A primary limitation of notice and consent, Nissenbaum argued, is the existence of a transparency paradox. Given that privacy policies are generally extremely abstruse and contain several loopholes, they are not an effective reference for the average user to determine exactly how their information will be maintained and kept private.

Nissenbaum cited a personal anecdote of her own experiences in healthcare as an example. When she was asked to sign off on a medical consent form regarding insurance for a surgery, she did not read the entirety of the medical consent form and instead relied on her trust in her caretaker.

“What I think is missing from transparency and consent is…unless we can build this sense of trust and great understanding of this relationship, we can’t rest everything on this concept of transparency and consent,” Nissenbaum said.

Second year law student Dennys Antonialli, who attended the talk, said he found Nissenbaum’s ideas particularly engaging because of his long-term interest in online privacy and his familiarity with her work. Antonialli appreciated Nissenbaum’s unique perspective on the issue and her treatment of its many challenges.

“It’s always useful to be confronted with new ideas for a better framework,” Antonialli said. “[Her talk] identified a real, serious problem and it certainly has the potential for at least making a more informed decision about online privacy.”

Concluding her talk, Nissenbaum recommended alternatives on how society can handle the challenges of online privacy. Ultimately, there is still a role for informed consent. But given that the online world is highly heterogeneous and thickly integrated with social life, it is necessary to conduct a comparative evaluation to determine how these challenges affect core values of freedom and autonomy, Nissenbaum said.

“We should write out substantive rules of expectation that govern the flow of information in those cases,” Nissenbaum said.

“We have a lot of knowledge about social life and we can bring it to our benefit,” she added.