Covering a range of countries from China, Japan, Brazil, and Mexico to the United States, Canada, Spain, France, and Hungary, this volume reveals the similarities and differences among populations in their reactions to the surveillance era and in the amount each knows about government monitoring. Topics deal with pertinent issues such as global, national, and local transfer of personal information about citizens' financial transactions, work, and travel. The authors also analyse the collaboration of government and the private sector in the collection and transfer of private information. A remarkable resource in understanding attitudes towards surveillance, security, and privacy, Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information is indispensable for anyone curious about what governments, the private sector, and citizens know about each other.
The distinguished editors and contributors to this book have produced a valuable report of the state of privacy in a number of jurisdictions with their distinct legal and political traditions. It highlights the challenges we confront in our effort to protect and defend a central democratic ideal. Raymond Wacks, Computer Law and Security Review . . . This book is. . . a seminal piece of literature. . . Although the volume is about privacy law and the international politics of data protection, it is vitally important for the whole field of surveillance studies. It is easy to follow, and written in a way that nonlegal scholars can easily grasp. Nils Zurawski, Surveillance and Society Global Privacy Protection is certainly to be commended. Daniel Seng, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies Global Privacy Protection reviews the origins and history of national privacy codes as social, political and legal phenomena in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, South Korea and the United States. The first chapter reviews key international statements on privacy rights, such as the OECD, EU and APEC principles. In the following chapters, the seven national case studies present and analyze the widest variety of privacy stories in an equally varied array of countries. They look beyond the details of what current national data-protection laws allow and prohibit to examine the origins of public concern about privacy; the forces promoting or opposing privacy codes; the roles of media, grassroots activists and elite intervention; and a host of other considerations shaping the present state of privacy protection in each country. Providing a rich description of the interweaving of national traditions, legal institutions, and power relations, this book will be of great interest to scholars engaged in the study of comparative law, information law and policy, civil liberties, and international law. It will also appeal to policy-makers in the many countries now contemplating the adoption of privacy codes, as well as to privacy activists.
Now in paperback, a sobering look at the threats to privacy posed by the new information technologies. Called ''one of the best books yet written on the new information age'' by Kirkus Reviews and now available in paperback, The End of Privacy shows how vast amounts of personal information are moving into corporate hands. Once there, this data can be combined and used to develop electronic profiles of individuals and groups that are potentially far more detailed, and far more intrusive, than the files built up in the past by state police and security agencies. Reg Whitaker shows that private e-mail can be read; employers can monitor workers' every move throughout the work day; and the U.S. Treasury can track every detail of personal and business finances. He goes on to demonstrate that we are even more vulnerable as consumers. From the familiar - bar-coding, credit and debit cards, online purchases - to the seemingly sci - -''smart cards'' that encode medical and criminal records, and security scans that read DNA - The End of Privacy reveals how ordinary citizens are losing control of the information about them that is available to anyone who can pay for it.
From credit-card purchases to electronic fingerprints, the amount of personal data available to government and business is growing exponentially. All industrial societies face the problem of how to regulate this vast world of information, but their governments have chosen distinctly different solutions. In Protectors of Privacy, Abraham L. Newman details how and why, in contrast to the United States, the nations of the European Union adopted comprehensive data privacy for both the public and the private sectors, enforceable by independent regulatory agencies known as data privacy authorities. Despite U.S. prominence in data technology, Newman shows, the strict privacy rules of the European Union have been adopted far more broadly across the globe than the self-regulatory approach championed by the United States. This rift has led to a series of trade and security disputes between the United States and the European Union. Based on many interviews with politicians, civil servants, and representatives from business and NGOs, and supplemented with archival sources, statistical analysis, and examples, Protectors of Privacy delineates the two principal types of privacy regimes-comprehensive and limited. The book presents a theory of regulatory development that highlights the role of transgovernmental networks not only in implementing rules but also in actively shaping the political process surrounding policymaking. More broadly, Newman explains how Europe's institutional revolution has created in certain sectors the regulatory capacity that allows it to challenge U.S. dominance in international economic governance.
Policing and surveillance acoss international borders has been of increasing concern since the 9.11 attacks in North America, and the accession of the Schengen Accord in Europe. This book brings together leading authorities in the field to discuss both theoretical and empirical aspects of the way in which modern states attempt to control their borders and a mobile population.
Surveillance and the Vanishing Individual is an investigation into the impact of the spread of digital technologies and practices, and especially the wide-spread practice of mass surveillance, on privacy and personhood. The book argues that the quest for prediction, certainty, and control lying at the heart of the state’s security apparatus destroys an essential component of human dignity and fundamentally undermines liberalism. The book begins with a discussion of the rise of the digital age and the historical import of this development. Subsequent chapters of the book examine different cultural understandings of privacy, the philosophical discussion of its centrality to human existence, and the form and extent of its legal protection. Lindau explores the reasons behind the rise of mass state surveillance, the modest legal restraints governing its use, and its deployment against activists, protestors, and dissidents and its impact on individuals and on privacy. The book then turns to a discussion of the rise of “surveillance capitalism” and, because this is not just—or even primarily—a U.S. phenomenon, examines the political, social, and other impacts of social media around the world. The book includes a case study discussing the global use of surveillance during the Covid-19 pandemic and the implications of this development before concluding with reflections on the relationship between mass surveillance and liberalism. The book will appeal equally to readers across the social sciences and philosophy, and to students in courses on privacy, surveillance, and democracy. Lindau expertly explores the social, political, and economic consequences of digitization and one of its essential features – the appropriation and “mining” of ever large troves of personal information. The book primarily focuses on the experience of the United States but includes a comparative cross-national and cross-regional analysis and a discussion of the link between different regime types and state surveillance.
Privacy and data protection are recognized as fundamental human rights. Recent developments, however, indicate that security issues are used to undermine these fundamental rights. As new technologies effectively facilitate collection, storage, processing and combination of personal data government agencies take advantage for their own purposes. Increasingly, and for other reasons, the business sector threatens the privacy of citizens as well. The contributions to this book explore the different aspects of the relationship between technology and privacy. The emergence of new technologies threaten increasingly privacy and/or data protection; however, little is known about the potential of these technologies that call for innovative and prospective analysis, or even new conceptual frameworks. Technology and privacy are two intertwined notions that must be jointly analyzed and faced. Technology is a social practice that embodies the capacity of societies to transform themselves by creating the possibility to generate and manipulate not only physical objects, but also symbols, cultural forms and social relations. In turn, privacy describes a vital and complex aspect of these social relations. Thus technology influences people’s understanding of privacy, and people’s understanding of privacy is a key factor in defining the direction of technological development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research.
