Information Accountability

Ease of information flow is both the boon and the bane of large-scale, decentralized systems like the World Wide Web. For all the benefits and opportunities brought by the information revolution, with that same revolution have come the challenges of inappropriate use. Such excesses and abuses in the use of information are most commonly viewed through the lens of information security. This paper argues that debates over online privacy, copyright, and information policy questions have been overly dominated by the access restriction perspective. Our alternative is to design systems that are oriented toward information accountability and appropriate use, rather than information security and access restriction. Our goal is to extend the Web architecture to support transparency and accountability.