Engineering Privacy in an Age of Information Abundance

We now live in an age of information abundance. A near-infinite supply of information presents unique opportunities to tackle the most difficult contemporary social problems. The fields of medicine, energy and the environment, finance, governance, and even agriculture have already been transformed by information technology and are about to hit a second inflection point. The opportunities for improving the world are infinite, but a particular challenge is posed for individual privacy: much of the relevant information is inherently about people's behavior in society. In this paper we offer a conceptualization of privacy within the context of information abundance and present a set of engineering challenges that must be overcome to achieve it.