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3 - The Consent Illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2023

Ignacio Cofone
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

Chapter 3 shows why the contracts model doesn’t work: consent is absent in the information economy. Privacy harm can’t be seen as a risk that people accept in exchange for a service. Inferences, relational data, and de-identified data aren’t captured by consent provisions. Consent is unattainable in the information economy more broadly because the dynamic between corporations and users is plagued with uneven knowledge, inequality, and a lack of choices. Data harms are collective and unknowable, making individual choices to reduce them impossible. Worse, privacy has a moral hazard problem: corporations have incentives to behave against our best interests, creating profitable harms after obtaining agreements. Privacy’s moral hazard leads to informational exploitation. One manifestation of valid consent in the information economy are consent refusals. We can consider them by thinking of people’s data as part of them, as their bodies are.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Privacy Fallacy
Harm and Power in the Information Economy
, pp. 46 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • The Consent Illusion
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.004
Available formats
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  • The Consent Illusion
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Consent Illusion
  • Ignacio Cofone, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: The Privacy Fallacy
  • Online publication: 16 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825.004
Available formats
×