Helen Nissenbaum is

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

information science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, Categorization, classification, manipulation, storage, information retrieval, retrieval, movement, dissemin ...

Cornell Tech Cornell Tech is a technology, business, law, and design campus of Cornell University located on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, New York City. It includes the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a joint academic venture between Cornell and the Tec ...

. She is best known for the concept of "

contextual integrity Contextual integrity is a theory of privacy developed by Helen Nissenbaum and presented in her book ''Privacy In Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life''. It comprises four essential descriptive claims: * Privacy is provid ...

" and her work on

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

privacy law Privacy law is the body of law that deals with the regulating, storing, and using of personally identifiable information, personal healthcare information, and financial information of individuals, which can be Personally identifiable information ...

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another * Trust (bus ...

, and

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

in the online world. Specifically, contextual integrity has influenced the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

government's thinking about

privacy issues The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 194 ...

Early life and education

Nissenbaum studied mathematics and philosophy at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...

in South Africa, graduating in 1976. She then went on to study at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where she completed a Master's in the social science of education in 1978, and a PhD in philosophy in 1983.

Work

Grants

Nissenbaum has received grants from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, Air Force Office of Scientific Research,

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator, and the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

Browser extensions

She has also contributed to several

browser extension A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web p ...

s for

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

and Chrome. ''TrackMeNot'' was the first extension that she co-created in 2006. ''TrackMeNot'' uses the notion of privacy-through-obfuscation to protect the user against online identification, surveillance, and profiling. ''AdNauseam'', created in 2009, follows a similar obfuscation strategy for online ads. ''Adnostic'' was created in 2013 to enable online ad targeting without compromising user's privacy.

Publications

Nissenbaum has written or edited a number of papers and books: * * * * * * *

Honors and awards

* 2014

Barwise Prize The K. Jon Barwise Prize (known as the Barwise Prize) was established in 2002 by the American Philosophical Association (APA), in conjunction with the APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers, on the basis of a proposal from the International Ass ...

of the

American Philosophical Association The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly ...

* 2017 honorary doctorate from the

Leuphana University of Lüneburg Leuphana University Lüneburg is a public university in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Leuphana was founded in 1946 as a college of education (''Pädagogische Hochschule''). Leuphana established a unique university model within the German acad ...

* 2019 distinguished fellow of the

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence *2021

Covey Award {{use mdy dates, date=September 2013 The Covey Award was established in 2008 by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy, to recognise "accomplished innovative research, and possibly teaching that flows from that research, in the ...

of th
International Association of Computing and Philosophy

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nissenbaum, Helen Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Scholars of privacy law Computer law scholars American philosophers New York University faculty Cornell Tech faculty Stanford University alumni University of the Witwatersrand alumni