Privacy policy in the UK. IT & Computer Science Essay (Essay Sample)

Literature Review
According to Lievrouw and Livingstone (2008) digital media is the combination of information and communication technologies and their social contexts and the three mutually shaping components technology, people and society. Technology is artifacts or devices that extend people’ ability of communication; People represents the practices or activities where practitioners design and use the artifacts or devices; society is the socio-economic arrangements or organizational infrastructures where the practices and artifacts are contextualized (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006).
The three mutual-shaping perspectives deftly clarifies media and privacy in media and communication science approach (Jo & Ine), and consumer electronics such as smart television can be considered as a kind of mediated technology, this thesis, therefore, will use these mutual-shaping components as the framework to review literature pertinent with Data Protection Officer in practice.
2.1 Technology
Also, Diaz and Guises (2012) divide privacy technologies into three approaches that are not exclusive to each other:
1 Privacy as “control”, privacy as “confidential” and privacy as “practice”. privacy as “control” considers organizations trustworthy actors who can take proper actions to protect users’ personal data if given accountable privacy policy and users are granted sufficient competence to control over their personal data;
2 Privacy as “confidential” takes a more conservative view over the organizations’ accountability. It assumes any kind of data discloses to organizations is risky, minimizing the data disclosed to organizations is the most secure way. Hence technologies in this approach focus on limiting data visibility and minimizing data that organizations can access and profiling. Regarding the technologies in this approach, Hoepman’s (?) articulation of Privacy Enhancing Technology neatly expresses the purpose of these technologies are:
Anonymity which is defined as not identifiable that can be well explained by ‘hiding in the crowd’;
Unlinkability that guarantees that two or more activities or data-items cannot be linked by algorithm to generate more information about the data subjects; Unobservability that no one is able to tell if certain activity happens or not such as sending an email.
3 Privacy as “practice” emphasizing on the transparency of data flow so that users can decide what data to be disclosed and accessed according to their will. This approach, therefore, focuses on helping people to construct their own perspectives during the process of decision making.
The case company of this thesis interestingly mainly takes the second approach to renovate their data structure in order to meet the GDPR requirements, as they consider it as the quickest way to comply with GDPR with the lowest risk, and cost. This will be discussed in detail in the chapter of Finding and Discussing.
As a bridging technology between the TV audiences and the Smart TV, the case company’s software solution- Smart TV launcher and its multiple applications along with its low-level software(hereafter Smart TV platform)- falls into the research mediated communication, as an online platform. Dijck, Poell and de Waal (2016) recognized three basic mechanisms of how online platform interrelated human activity with its artifact, which is also the process problematic regarding data disclosure:
1 Datafication: it is a process that online platforms to convert users’ online or offline behavior into data consisting of activities of data capturing and data circulating. Online platforms not only collect what users do, think and feel, but also configure users’ behavior by datumizing people’s social activities and simultaneously datumizing environments such as air pollution and traffic status.
2 Commodification: it is the technological and commercial process of turning non-commodities into commodities with exchange value created by the platforms.
3 Selection: it refers to the content-wise steer communication by selecting relevant topics and actors.