Privacy – Appraising Challenges to Technologies and Ethics
Co-ordinator: Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis & Forecasting (ICTAF), Tel-Aviv, Israel
Client: European Commission, DG RTD
Duration: January 2010 – December 2012
Website: www.practis.org
Objectives
The vision that motivates PRACTIS is of a society that is aware of the evolving challenges to privacy posed by emerging technologies and that is equipped to respond to them. PRACTIS will assess the potential impacts of emerging technologies and new scientific knowledge on privacy. It will propose ethical frameworks and legal procedures for coping with potential risks to privacy. Furthermore, it will explore novel policy options for addressing individuals’ changing privacy needs in the light of new technologies, as well as examining new ethical frameworks in law and the implementation of guidelines for new technology or product development. Specifically, long-range horizon scanning will be conducted focused on technologies that might affect privacy. Technologies such as nano, bio, info and cognition (NBIC) will be scrutinized and new threats to privacy will be evaluated. In addition, trends in changing perceptions of privacy will be surveyed (including among high-school students). These empirical studies will provide the basis for future scenarios of the privacy-technology interface, which, in turn, will lead to the formulation of new ethical frameworks and legal considerations. Research methods will include interviews, expert surveys, focus groups, and brainstorming. PRACTIS will generate deeper knowledge and higher awareness among scholars and relevant stakeholders regarding the early identification of changes in privacy perceptions due to new technologies. An innovative idea to be investigated in PRACTIS is the embedding of privacy issues in the development process of new technologies. By bringing leading experts in technology foresight and assessment together with specialists in ethical and legal aspects of privacy, PRACTIS offers a unique combination of disciplines that will produce new knowledge on the relationship between technology, privacy and ethics. Implications of the findings will be derived for policymakers, scholars, standardization bodies and other stakeholders.
Partners
- The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR), Austria
- Research Centre in Informatics and Law of the University Faculties of Notre-Dame de la Paix, Belgium
- The Foundation for European Scientific Co-operation (FEWN), Poland
- Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), Finland
- NEXUS Berlin, Germany