In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

The threats to privacy are well known: the National Security Agency tracks our phone calls; Google records where we go online and how we set our thermostats; Facebook changes our privacy settings when it wishes; Target gets hacked and loses control of our credit card information; our medical records are available for sale to strangers; our children are fingerprinted and their every test score saved for posterity; and small robots patrol our schoolyards and drones may soon fill our skies. The contributors to this anthology don't simply describe these problems or warn about the loss of privacy—they propose solutions. They look closely at business practices, public policy, and technology design, and ask, “Should this continue? Is there a better approach?” They take seriously the dictum of Thomas Edison: “What one creates with his hand, he should control with his head.” It's a new approach to the privacy debate, one that assumes privacy is worth protecting, that there are solutions to be found, and that the future is not yet known. This volume will be an essential reference for policy makers and researchers, journalists and scholars, and others looking for answers to one of the biggest challenges of our modern day. The premise is clear: there's a problem—let's find a solution.

The need for quality improvement and for cost saving are driving both individual choices and health system dynamics. The health services research that we need to support informed choices depends on access to data, but at the same time, individual privacy and patient-health care provider confidentiality must be protected.

Discusses such electronic privacy concerns as what privacy is, how it relates to individuals, laws and regulations, identity theft, monitoring devices, and how to protect Internet transactions.

This volume brings together papers that offer methodologies, conceptual analyses, highlight issues, propose solutions, and discuss practices regarding privacy and data protection. It is one of the results of the eight annual International Conference on Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection, CPDP 2015, held in Brussels in January 2015. The book explores core concepts, rights and values in (upcoming) data protection regulation and their (in)adequacy in view of developments such as Big and Open Data, including the right to be forgotten, metadata, and anonymity. It discusses privacy promoting methods and tools such as a formal systems modeling methodology, privacy by design in various forms (robotics, anonymous payment), the opportunities and burdens of privacy self management, the differentiating role privacy can play in innovation. The book also discusses EU policies with respect to Big and Open Data and provides advice to policy makers regarding these topics. Also attention is being paid to regulation and its effects, for instance in case of the so-called ‘EU-cookie law’ and groundbreaking cases, such as Europe v. Facebook. This interdisciplinary book was written during what may turn out to be the final stages of the process of the fundamental revision of the current EU data protection law by the Data Protection Package proposed by the European Commission. It discusses open issues and daring and prospective approaches. It will serve as an insightful resource for readers with an interest in privacy and data protection.

This book presents the latest research on the challenges and solutions affecting the equilibrium between freedom of speech, freedom of information, information security and the right to informational privacy. Given the complexity of the topics addressed, the book shows how old legal and ethical frameworks may need to be not only updated, but also supplemented and complemented by new conceptual solutions. Neither a conservative attitude (“more of the same”) nor a revolutionary zeal (“never seen before”) is likely to lead to satisfactory solutions. Instead, more reflection and better conceptual design are needed, not least to harmonise different perspectives and legal frameworks internationally. The focus of the book is on how we may reconcile high levels of information security with robust degrees of informational privacy, also in connection with recent challenges presented by phenomena such as “big data” and security scandals, as well as new legislation initiatives, such as those concerning “the right to be forgotten” and the use of personal data in biomedical research. The book seeks to offer analyses and solutions of the new tensions, in order to build a fair, shareable and sustainable balance in this vital area of human interactions.

Privacy and data protection in police work and law enforcement cooperation has always been a challenging issue. Current developments in EU internal security policy, such as increased information sharing (which includes the exchange of personal data between European law enforcement agencies and judicial actors in the area of freedom, security and justice (Europol, Eurojust, Frontex and OLAF)) and the access of EU agencies, in particular Europol and Eurojust, to data stored in European information systems such as the SIS (II), VIS, CIS or Eurodac raise interesting questions regarding the balance between the rights of individuals and security interests. This book deals with the complexity of the relations between these actors and offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of the structures for information exchange in the area of freedom, security and justice and their compliance with data protection rules in this field.