The Governance of Privacy : Policy Instruments in Global Perspective / Raab, Charles D

"This book was published in 2003.This book offers a broad and incisive analysis of the governance of privacy protection with regard to personal information in contemporary advanced industrial states. Based on research across many countries, it discusses the goals of privacy protection policy and the changing discourse surrounding the privacy issue, concerning risk, trust and social values. It analyzes at length the contemporary policy instruments that together comprise the inventory of possible solutions to the problem of privacy protection. It argues that privacy protection depends upon an integration of these instruments, but that any country's efforts are inescapably linked with the actions of others that operate outside its borders. The book concludes that, in a ’globalizing’ world, this regulatory interdependence could lead either to a search for the highest possible standard of privacy protection, or to competitive deregulation, or to a more complex outcome reflecting the nature of the issue and its policy responses."--Provided by publisher Privacy protection, according to Colin Bennett and Charles Raab, involves politics and public policy as much as it does law and technology. Moreover, the protection of our personal information in a globalized, borderless world means that privacy-related policies are inextricably interdependent. In this updated paperback edition of The Governance of Privacy Bennett and Raab analyze a broad range of privacy policy instruments available to contemporary advanced industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy-enhancing technologies. They consider two possible dynamics of privacy regulation--a "race to the bottom," with competitive deregulation by countries eager to attract global investment in information technology, versus "a race to the top," with the progressive establishment of global privacy standards.Bennett and Raab begin by discussing the goals of privacy protection, the liberal and individualist assumptions behind it, and the neglected relationship between privacy and social equity. They describe and evaluate different policy instruments, including the important 1995 Directive on Data Protection from the European Union, as well as the general efficacy of the "top-down" statutory approach and self-regulatory and technological alternatives to it. They evaluate the interrelationships of these policy instruments and their position in a global framework of regulation and policy by state and non-state actors. And finally, they consider whether all of this policy activity at international, national, and corporate levels necessarily means higher levels of privacy protection. The authors analyse privacy policy instruments available to industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy enhancing technologies, considering two possible dynamics of privacy regulation: a 'race to the bottom' versus 'a race to the top'