CODATA Data Ethics Task Group: Briefing Note - Privacy

Briefing note prepared by the CODATA Data Ethics Task Group 2023-2025 on Privacy. Summary: Privacy is a fundamental human right, and a requirement for individual and community wellbeing. However, privacy is also theoretically and practically contested and paradoxical. A critical understanding of privacy emphasises the importance of power and harm, and how this might differentially and contextually impact individuals and communities. Technological advance brings new categories of data, such as genomes, for which privacy rules need to be re-conceptualised and updated. For open science to maintain its values of quality and integrity, and collective benefit, we need to update how we conceptualise privacy, especially in the face of rapid and disruptive technological advancement.