This new encyclopedia discusses the practical, political, psychological, and philosphical challenges we face as technological advances have changed the landscape of traditional notions of privacy.

This new edition discusses the practical, political, psychological, and philosphical challenges we face as technological advances have changed the landscape of traditional notions of privacy.

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.

Experts from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, explore five potential paths to privacy protection.

Privacy is a growing concern in the United States and around the world. The spread of the Internet and the seemingly boundaryless options for collecting, saving, sharing, and comparing information trigger consumer worries. Online practices of business and government agencies may present new ways to compromise privacy, and e-commerce and technologies that make a wide range of personal information available to anyone with a Web browser only begin to hint at the possibilities for inappropriate or unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of privacy in the information age. It explores such important concepts as how the threats to privacy evolving, how can privacy be protected and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and effectively? This book seeks to raise awareness of the web of connectedness among the actions one takes and the privacy policies that are enacted, and provides a variety of tools and concepts with which debates over privacy can be more fruitfully engaged. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age focuses on three major components affecting notions, perceptions, and expectations of privacy: technological change, societal shifts, and circumstantial discontinuities. This book will be of special interest to anyone interested in understanding why privacy issues are often so intractable.

In a revealing study of how digital dossiers are created (usually without our knowledge), the author argues that we must rethink our understanding of what privacy is and what it means in the digital age, and then reform the laws that define and regulate it. Reprint.

The human race now creates, distributes and stores more information than at any other time in history. Frictionless and cheap digital networks circulate information in ways which either authors or subjects are unable to trace or control. Servers store data which can be found on the world wide web years after it has ceased to be accurate or relevant to its original use. These developments have given rise to a movement promoting a 'right to be forgotten': an argument that freedom of expression should be balanced by a right to erase information which affects an individual, under certain conditions. Rights to privacy therefore need extending and strengthening in the digital era. This strand of thinking influenced a significant judgement delivered by the European Court of Justice in May 2014. As a result, the dominant internet search engine in Europe, Google, has been required to remove links to hundreds of thousands of pieces of information on application from individuals who considered their interests harmed. We know very little of how these delinking choices are made.This book looks at the implications of this controversial decision for free expression, journalism and information in the digital public sphere. Two rights-free speech and privacy-collide in a new way in age of information saturation. Is the judgement a threat to freedom of information and the accuracy of the historical record or the first step in establishing essential new rights in the digital era.