Privacy as an archival problem and a solution

People feel that their privacy is violated when information about them is passed inappropriately from one context or social sphere to another. This makes records and archives management a focal point of privacy issues, because its goal is to transfer information from one context, place, and point in time to other contexts, places, and points in time. Society has a number of mechanisms (“strategies”) for protecting the privacy of people. The article examines five of them (purpose limitation, privacy self-management and right to be forgotten, destruction, anonymization, and information safe haven approach) and the limits they set to the contextual transfer of information. If the strategies are implemented in society without regard for archival needs, archives have difficulties in fulfilling their functions in society. Therefore, records professionals should make their point of view known when privacy issues are discussed. Records professionals also should be aware of the mutability of the category of personally identifiable information and the changing nature of privacy issues in the digital environment. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.