Those of us who come to the privacy management arena from a computer security background tend take an extremely narrow and focused view of how technology can protect privacy. We love to debate each other on esoteric subjects cryptographic key strengths, the merits of strong two-factor authentication, trust models in networked systems and all sorts of deep technologies. As someone who worked in public key infrastructure technologies for several years and firewall technology before that, no one is a bigger fan of emerging security technology than I. These are all good and useful topics to be discussing and theses sorts of technologies are important foundations of a networked world.

Traditionally we think of privacy enhancing technologies has tools for hiding, obfuscating, and controlling disclosure. But in terms of an overall approach to privacy management we should also think about how technology can be used to creates visibility and awareness of informations security practices.

This point was made quite well recently by Harriet Pearson, VP of corporate affairs and Chief Privacy Office for IBM, in an interview with Computer World.

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