Usability in Government Systems

Chapter 5

Privacy and the Citizen

Dianne Murray* and Karen Renaud^†

*Putting People Before Computers, Teddington, UK

†School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

“Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a Peeping Tom to install your window blinds.”

— John Perry Barlow

Introduction

The first step in addressing this question is to define the concept of privacy. Here we meet our first hurdle because arriving at a widely accepted definition is not a trivial task. The reality is that privacy means different things to different people (Kumaraguru & Cranor, 2005), and different cultures have different needs for privacy (Kaya & Weber, 2003). The Calcutt Committee in the United Kingdom adopted the following ...