PRISMS – Privacy and Security Mirrors

The PRISMS project will analyse the traditional trade-off model between privacy and security and devise a more evidence-based perspective for reconciling privacy and security, trust and concern. It will examine how technologies aimed at enhancing security are subjecting citizens to an increasing amount of surveillance and, in many cases, causing infringements of privacy and fundamental rights. PRISMS will conduct both a multidisciplinary inquiry into the concepts of privacy and security and their relationships and an EU-wide survey to determine whether people evaluate the introduction of security technologies in terms of a trade-off.

As a result, PRISMS will determine the factors that affect the public assessment of the security and privacy implications of a given security technology. The project will use these results to devise a decision support system (DSS) providing users (those who deploy and operate security systems) insight into the pros and cons, constraints and limits of specific security investments compared to alternatives taking into account a wider society context.

Project members

Gabriela Bodea (TNO) Anne Fleur van Veenstra (TNO) Bas van Schoonhoven (TNO)

Additional information

Contact (project leader): Marc van Lieshout

Funded by the European Commission, SEC Programme Timeframe: 1 February 2012 – 1 August 2015