Privacy and data protection have never been static. On the contrary, the history of the last 40 years shows the reverse. New issues and challenges continue to emerge, requiring an ongoing process of interpreting their effect in terms of reach, objectives and their deeper significance. Indeed, the consequences of technological applications due to unprecedented storage, processing and transmission capacities and to the possibilities of miniaturisation, convergence, interoperability and ubiquity, represent powerful triggers and challenges to emerging developments, but they are certainly not the only determining factor. The current developments are also linked to many other sources of action and change, such as business models, security policies, population management, police work and law enforcement, leisure, culture, health policies, practices in the ‘real’ and in the ‘virtual’ world and so on. In the face of such dynamism, the "element of choice” unambiguously evokes both the need to collectively take responsibility and direct those developments in a desirable direction, providing the ambit to influence and steer the course of things in a way that matches our expectations not only toward privacy and data protection, but also more broadly, to the kind of world we are building. This challenge is not an easy one since all “big” policy choices we might be willing to make are conditioned by a myriad of “small” decisions and bifurcations that have already set many small switches in irreversible positions. In one way or another, all the contributions to this book express the complexity of making choices regarding issues of privacy and data protection. This is all the more relevant given that the 1995 EC Data Protection Directive, the centrepiece of European data protection, is being revised as these sentences are written.
Computers, Privacy and Data Protection: an Element of Choice Serge Gutwirth · Yves Poullet · Paul De Hert · Ronald Leenes Editors Computers, Privacy and Data Protection: an Element of Choice 123 Editors Serge Gutwirth Vrije Universiteit Brussel Center for Law, Science, Technology & Society Studies (LSTS) Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussels Belgium
[email protected] Prof. Paul De Hert Vrije Universiteit Brussel Center for Law, Science, Technology & Society Studies (LSTS) Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussels Belgium
[email protected] Prof. Yves Poullet University of Namur Research Centre for Information Technology & Law Rempart de la Vierge 5 5000 Namur Belgium
[email protected] Ronald Leenes Tilburg University TILT Warandelaan 2 5037 AB Tilburg Netherlands
[email protected] ISBN 978-94-007-0640-8 e-ISBN 978-94-007-0641-5 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0641-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922121 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business M