## 4 Privacy and Open Government
### Finding the Right Balance: Public Personal Information
Because it was to be put to a referendum, and because election campaign contributions are a matter of public record, it was not difficult for opponents of the proposition to create an online interactive map that matched the name of each donor who supported Proposition 8, along with the amount of their donation to their street address. While the goal of public political campaign finance lists is transparency and accountability, this information can have significant privacy impacts depending on how it is disseminated publicly. The experience around Proposition 8 led to calls for changes to the laws around disclosure of campaign finance information in order to protect donor privacy [45]. The Proposition 8 map is a high-profile example of a major challenge in the context of public personal information. Although the problem of \"public\" personal information pre-dates the open government movement, it will only be exacerbated in the context of open data. If such personal information is considered \"public\", should a government make the data available through proactive disclosure? How can the competing goals of privacy protection and transparency be appropriately balanced? As the experience of courts and tribunals shows, it may sometimes be necessary to place limits on the digital disclosure of some of the information in a \"public\" record in order to achieve this balance. In theory, private sector data protection laws--where they exist--would apply to the collection, use and disclosure of publicly available personal information provided by government. However, such laws will generally only apply where there is a commercial dimension to the re-use of the information. Private or non-commercial activities generally fall outside the reach of data protection legislation. In addition, uses that serve freedom of expression goals, such as journalism (broadly defined) may also be exempt [46]. Even where there is a commercial use, data protection laws will generally require that such use be consistent with the purposes for which the information is made available to the public [47]. Yet these purposes may not always be entirely evident. For example, in the context of court or tribunal decisions, the reasons for publication may range from the promotion of transparency and accountability in the administration of justice to the provision of useful precedents to those who may engage in similar proceedings. It may also not be entirely clear what re-uses actually serve a stated purpose. In the Proposition 8 case, if the purpose for the disclosure of the information is to ensure transparency and accountability in the context of campaign financing, it might be possible to argue that being able to identify trends or patterns in financing by citizens based on particular geo-demographic considerations also serves the goals of transparency and accountability by revealing important information about patterns of contributions [45]. Ultimately, the open licences that would accompany data released as open data have no mechanism in them to limit the use of data to particular purposes, including those for which the data was originally collected. These examples illustrate that the balance between privacy on the one hand and transparency and accountability on the other can be difficult to achieve. Certainly, the experience of courts and tribunals demonstrates that in some cases privacy interests must give way to transparency and accountability. In the government context, while some personal information is considered to be \"public\", its reuse is limited to purposes consistent with the goals of its original collection. Not only are these purposes often ambiguous, they are likely impossible to police or enforce in the fast-moving data world. Yet a tighter control over this information would limit transparency and accountability. Thus one challenge for governments is to reconsider the nature and extent of \"public\" personal information that is disclosed in light of both privacy and transparency considerations.