A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy, and Shifting Social Norms
Yale Journal of Law and Technology
A Theory of Creepy: Technolog y, Privacy, and Shifting Social Norms
Omer Tene 0 1
Rishon Le Zion 0 1
Israel 0 1
Technology Law Commons 0 1
0 Omer Tene & Jules Polonetsky, A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy, and Shift ing Social Norms, 16 Yale J.L. & Tech (2014). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol16/iss1/2
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16 YALE J.L. & TECH. 59 (2013)
I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................59
II. WHAT’S CREEPY?...................................................................................61
A. Ambient social apps ........................................................................61
B. Social listening ................................................................................63
C. Personalized analytics ....................................................................65
D. Data-driven marketing ....................................................................66
E. New product launches .....................................................................69
III. THE SHORTCOMINGS OF LAW .................................................................71
IV. D RIVERS FOR CHANGE............................................................................76
A. Business drivers ..............................................................................77
B. Technological drivers .....................................................................78
C. Individual drivers ............................................................................79
V. HOW TO AVOID CREEP ............................................................................82
A. Against technological determinism .................................................83
B. Against privacy lurch ......................................................................87
C. Against targeting the superuser ......................................................92
D. For turning on the light...................................................................94
E. For the golden rule .........................................................................99
VI. C ONCLUSION........................................................................................100
I.
INTRODUCTION
The rapid evolution of digital technologies has hurled dense social
and ethical dilemmas that we have hardly begun to map or understand to the
forefront of public and legal discourse. In the near past, community norms
helped guide a clear sense of ethical boundaries with respect to privacy. We
all knew, for example, that one should not peek into the window of a house
even if it were left open, nor hire a private detective to investigate a casual
date or the social life of a prospective employee.
* Omer Tene is Vice Dean of the College of Management School of Law, Rishon Le Zion,
Israel; Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society; and Senior Fellow
at the Future of Privacy Forum. Jules Polonetsky is Co-chair and Executive Director of the
Future of Privacy Forum. The authors would like to thank the participants in the Privacy
Law Scholars Conference sessions devoted to discussion of this article.
Yet with technological innovation rapidly driving new models for
business and inviting new types of socialization, we often have nothing
more than a fleeting intuition as to what is right or wrong. Our intuition may
suggest that it is responsible to investigate the driving record of the nanny
who drives our child to school, since such tools are now readily available.1
But is it also acceptable to seek out the records of other parents in our
child’s car pool, or of a date who picks us up by car?
Alas, intuitions and perceptions of how our social values should
align with our technological capabilities are highly subjective. And, as new
technologies strain our social norms, a shared understanding of that
alignment is even more difficult to capture. The word “creepy” has become
something of a term of art in privacy policy to denote situations where the
two do not line up.
This article presents a set of social and legal considerations to help
individuals, engineers, businesses, and policymakers navigate a world of
new technologies and evolving social norms. For businesses that make
money by leveraging newly available data sources, it is critical to
operationalize these subjective notions into coherent business and policy
strategies. These considerations revolve around concept (...truncated)