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/Title (Position Paper on Accountability)
/Subject ()
/Author (Lalana Kagal and Hal Abelson)}

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\title{The Accountability Perspective}

\author{Lalana Kagal and Hal Abelson\\
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab\\
32 Vassar Street Cambridge MA 02139\\
\{lkagal, hal\}@csail.mit.edu}

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\section{Extended Abstract}

Attempts to address issues of personal privacy in a world of
computerized databases and information networks typically proceed from
the perspective of controlling or preventing access to
information. The ease of sharing and copying data and of aggregating
and searching across multiple databases, to reveal private information
from public sources have made this perspective inadequate for
addressing information misuse on the
Internet~\cite{kagal10w3cprivacy}. In addition, an exclusive reliance
on access restriction leads to technology and policy strategies in
which information, once revealed, is completely uncontrolled.

We propose alternate strategies to access control, ones that are
similar to how legal and social rules work in democratic
societies. Vast majority of these rules are not enforced perfectly or
automatically, yet most of us follow the majority of the rules because
social systems built up over thousands of years encourage us to do so
and often make compliance easier than violation.  For example, when
trying to find parking on the street even if there is no traffic
police around to give me a fine or a ticket, most people will still
obey the parking signs because of the way social and legal norms have
been built into our societies. They've made it easier to meet the
norms than violate them, risk getting caught and getting punished. The
set of legal or social norms govern what we can or cannot do, and they
have been ingrained into our way of thinking such that most people go
through life without any problems. When problems occur, there are
mechanisms that ensure that violators are reprimanded.

From a technology perspective, this requires supplementing legal and
technical mechanisms for access control with new mechanisms for
transparency and accountability of {\it data use}. We suggest
focussing on helping users conform to policies by making them aware of
the usage restrictions associated with the data and to understand the
implications of their actions and of violating the policy, and a
technology infrastructure that supports privacy through provable
accountability to usage rules rather than merely data access
restrictions.

In order to support the responsible use of private data, we believe
information systems should be engineered to have the characteristics
described below

\begin{itemize}

\item{Give users due notice: } Both in the case of collecting their
  data and using it, information systems must give users due
  notice. This will give users the opportunity to respond
  appropriately - to either take action to protect their privacy or
  voluntarily give it up in exchange for better service. 

\item{Don't rely just on upfront authorization, also support
  accountability: } A-priori authorization provides a way to restrict
  access to sensitive data but has several
  problems~\cite{kagal10w3cprivacy}. A supporting approach is to
  provide post-facto accountability, which requires the system to have
  mechanisms in place to identify misuse of
  data~\cite{weitzner06transparent}. This requires (i) tracking the
  data as it flows through the system and to maintain detailed
  provenance information, (ii) machine processable usage policies,
  (iii) policy tools that reason over policies and provenance to
  identify violations.

\item{Privacy-enabling interface design: } As we want to encourage
  appropriate use not only by information systems but also by users,
  system interfaces should provide hints or signs describing optimal
  behavior for users with respect to data. Some approaches include (i)
  policy-awareness which provides all participants with accessible and
  understandable views of the policies associated with information
  resources including the consequences of misuse, and (ii) tools for
  helping users understand the consequences of their actions (such as
  posting a picture on their social network or sending an email) on
  the Web, some of which will have privacy implications. 

\end{itemize}

Most online businesses today leverage user data to provide more
customization and so privacy can be seen as a tradeoff between
value-added services and loss of personal data. As preventing access
to personal data is no longer an option and as sensitive data can be
easily inferred from public sources, we believe the future of privacy
protection lies in developing frameworks that ensure the responsible
collection and use of data and in educating users on good privacy
practices.

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