The Political Economy of Privacy Enhancing Technologies
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PETs have increasingly become vital empowering tools in today's highly datafied society. However, their development has been primarily concerned with improving usability and ensuring confidentiality online. Privileging these considerations might unintendedly lead to fixed ideas about users, but diversity of thought, action, ability, and circumstance play a fundamental role in the distortion and acceptance of any PETs. In this paper we elaborate some of the manifestations of the distortions, like inadequate and exclusory design, and uneven distribution of costs and benefits. Drawing on Amartya Sen's capability approach we propose that a normative evaluation of personal, social, and political diversities can be used as a foundation to conceptualize and develop PETs. We outline a research agenda based on this proposition and suggest pertinent empirical and methodological research paths. Our contribution offers an evaluative space to make inter-personal comparisons to inform the development of PETs.
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