“Can You Engineer Privacy?” featured in Aug 2014 CACM has one of the best start paragraphs I have seen. Following this strong start, the article articulately introduces some of the challenge and areas of active research in privacy engineering. The article does an excellent job of presenting an cross discipline overview though the lack of reference (the typical style of CACM articles) can leave you guessing which specific works the article was referring too.

The article introduces data minimization, a concept that ignored that companies business models rely on collecting, using (e.g. targeted ads) & selling data to provide online services that are free at the point of use such as facebook and google, which clearly people want.

Personal data is an assert that each individual owns. Many people want to exchange they’re personal data for services, our job as a community to enable them and provide viable alternatives instead of blocking them.

“Can You Engineer Privacy?” is worth reading if your new to the privacy research and refreshingly articulate, its available over at the CACM.