The right to privacy is fundamental to our existence as human beings. It’s about the knowledge that, where we are in our most vulnerable, or potentially most embarrassing states, at our lowest, or at our most ecstatic, we can be in that state unwatched, unobserved.
And more than that. In a world of constant connection, it is about, as US lawmakers Warren and Brandeis explained way back in 1890, the right to be ‘let alone’ – to have down time, quiet space, away from hassle, and, these days, notifications.
Trust
My role as a privacy leader is to help organisations to understand those individual rights, and navigate a pathway that respects them while allowing the organisation to interact with their customers, and manage and respect their employees.
Done well, the result of an effective privacy programme should be growth in trust in your business, because your clients and employees understand that you will treat their data and their wishes with respect.
This works both consumers and for business clients, especially where they are taking their products into the consumer space. Today’s consumer is smart. They know that there is a pay off in organisations using their data.
But they also know that their data has value, and that will quickly lose faith in brands that don’t show respect for what their care about, including their privacy rights.
Pragmatism
Good privacy leaders are those that support innovation and help their stakeholders to do things in the right way. This means looking at what the organisation is trying to achieve at strategic and tactical levels, for people, products and services, and working out how best we can support those aims.
We do this by keeping clients, employees and service users at front of mind, knowing that the impact on trust and business reputation from not respecting privacy and data protection can be hugely damaging, whether that’s through hassling, unsolicited marketing, privacy-invasive tracking, or through security breaches.
We also know that it’s better – and usually cheaper and faster in the long run – to design privacy and data protection in at the start of a journey that to try to retrofit it down the line.
Privacy. Data. Ethics. 