Institutionalizing Behavior‐Based Privacy

After 9/11, a bitter national debate emerged pitting privacy against security. No theory of privacy or domestic security and no compromise blend of institutional insights and technological advances have been proposed to meet this dilemma. This work fills that gap by offering a middle ground proposing a knowledge‐based systems focus that parses privacy into two separable concepts: behavior and identity in the behavior–identity–knowledge (BIK) model. The authors outline a plan for a BIK‐sensible world involving initial steps to simulate behavior choices, streamlined social identity masking, and the institutional adaptations required for a practical compromise between security and privacy.