Practical Privacy as Geometry

In the latter part of the 19th century, the corridors of Harvard Law School reverberated with a revolutionary concept. Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of the Law School at the time, challenged the prevailing paradigm of legal education and legal reasoning with an innovative proposition: to treat law as a science akin to Euclidean geometry. This Langdellian theory breathed new life into the legal domain, imputing logic, axioms, fundamental core principles, and doctrines into the practice of legal reasoning.

Privacy as Science

As we navigate through the 21st century, Langdell's theories provide a compelling metaphorical compass for a completely different sphere – the complex universe of digital privacy, which operates at the intersection of navigating the complexities of social dynamics and methods of practice and procedure. Just as Langdell urged legal reasoning to be undertaken in a scientific manner in some cases, we find ourselves grappling with the need to perceive digital privacy as a science with its axioms, postulates, theorems, and proofs.

The Fundamentals: Axioms, Postulates, Theorems, and Proofs

The first step in this scientific process, analogous to identifying geometric shapes in a complex diagram, is understanding the vast landscape of cyberspace. We must recognise the breadth of our information exposure — on our devices, online accounts, and the digital entities we interact with as the 'points' and 'lines' of our virtual universe. Understanding the interactions between these elements and the data they generate is fundamental to constructing any digital privacy strategy.

Once we recognise these fundamental entities, the next step is establishing our 'axioms' – the universal truths of digital privacy. These principles, such as the rights to personal autonomy, anonymity, and security, form the bedrock of our digital privacy paradigm. They set the basis from which we can start constructing our framework.

Drawing on these axioms, we formulate our 'postulates'. These rules derive from our fundamental principles governing how data should be handled in the digital universe. They include concepts like data minimisation, purpose limitation, and data integrity. These postulates serve as the guiding rules of our digital privacy strategy, much like geometric postulates help us understand the relationships among different geometric entities.

Subsequent to postulates, we construct our 'theorems' — complex laws that govern our digital existence, akin to how geometric theorems dictate the nature of shapes and forms. These digital privacy theorems include local laws like the Privacy Act 2020 and comprehensive regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and compliance frameworks. These dictate how entities must operate to maintain digital privacy, setting rules for data collection, processing, and sharing.

Finally, we come to our 'proofs' — objective, logical arguments to verify our theorems. In digital privacy, we use scientific methodologies to prove the efficacy of our measures. Techniques we use here at Faraday, like online presence audits, serve as our 'proofs', confirming that our privacy measures are robust and effective.

Navigating the dynamic nature of digital privacy

However, like any science, the field of digital privacy is not static. It is a living, evolving entity, facing novel challenges that continually alter its landscape. This dynamic nature underscores why treating practical privacy practice as a science is essential. It requires constant observation, hypothesis formation, testing, and validation. It demands the precision of a mathematician, a scientist's curiosity, and a privacy advocate's vigilance to ensure the axioms we follow remain strong.

Just as Christopher Columbus Langdell revolutionised the study of law by viewing it through the lens of geometry, we must revolutionise our understanding of practical privacy by viewing it through the lens of science. It's not about guessing and hoping for the best; it's about understanding the fundamental laws and axioms that govern our digital universe and using them to construct a safe, private digital experience. It's time we take a step back from treating practical privacy as an art and embrace privacy practice as the science it indeed can be.

Reference:

• [1] Grey, T. C. (1983). Langdell's orthodoxy. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 45(1), 1-54.