Consent as Mechanism to Preserve Information Privacy: Its Origin, Evolution, and Current Relevance

Consent as Mechanism to Preserve Information Privacy: Its Origin, Evolution, and Current Relevance
Conference paper
Marietjie Botes
International Workshop on Security and Trust Management, STM 2023, 30 October 2023
Abstract
Informed consent and the requirements to obtain ethical-legal sound consent has a long and rich history that originated with the medical treatment of patients and then evolved into its application in the field of biomedical research. The same concepts and principles of consent has been adopted to be applied in the digital sphere. However, upon closer scrutiny it is clear why this principle, that originated for the protection of a person’s bodily integrity cannot be adequately applied in the digital sphere to protect people’s personal data. To the contrary it transpired that the ethical-legal requirements of consent has been made futile in the context of digital consent receipts by erroneously comparing and applying this concept to transactions receipts and commercial contracts. This paper investigates this evolution of biomedical consent to digital consent and analyze the difference between the concept of consent as it developed for biomedical application and compare that with the current application of consent in the digital sphere.