Abstract

Defining privacy is a long-sought goal for philosophers and legal scholars alike. Current definitions lack mathematical rigor. They are therefore impracticable for domains such as economics and computer science in which privacy needs to be quantified and computed. This paper describes a game-theoretic framework in which privacy requires no definition per se. Rather, it is an emergent property of specific games, the strategy by which players maximize their reward. In this context, key activities related to privacy, such as methods for its protection and ways in which it is traded, are given concrete meaning. Based in game theory, emergent privacy demonstrates that the right to privacy can be derived, at least in part, on a utilitarian philosophical basis.