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.

National identity cards are in the news. While paper ID documents have been used in some countries for a long time, today's rapid growth features high-tech IDs with built-in biometrics and RFID chips. Both long-term trends towards e-Government and the more recent responses to 9/11 have prompted the quest for more stable identity systems. Commercial pressures mix with security rationales to catalyze ID development, aimed at accuracy, efficiency and speed. New ID systems also depend on computerized national registries. Many questions are raised about new IDs but they are often limited by focusing on the cards themselves or on "privacy." Playing the Identity Card shows not only the benefits of how the state can "see" citizens better using these instruments but also the challenges this raises for civil liberties and human rights. ID cards are part of a broader trend towards intensified surveillance and as such are understood very differently according to the history and cultures of the countries concerned.

National identity cards are in the news. While paper ID documents have been used in some countries for a long time, today's rapid growth features high-tech IDs with built-in biometrics and RFID chips. Both long-term trends towards e-Government and the more recent responses to 9/11 have prompted the quest for more stable identity systems. Commercial pressures mix with security rationales to catalyze ID development, aimed at accuracy, efficiency and speed. New ID systems also depend on computerized national registries. Many questions are raised about new IDs but they are often limited by focusing on the cards themselves or on "privacy." Playing the Identity Card shows not only the benefits of how the state can "see" citizens better using these instruments but also the challenges this raises for civil liberties and human rights. ID cards are part of a broader trend towards intensified surveillance and as such are understood very differently according to the history and cultures of the countries concerned.

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.

The information revolution has brought with it the technology for easily collecting personal information about individuals, a facility that inherently threatens personal privacy. Colin J. Bennett here examines political responses to the data protection issue in four Western democracies, comparing legislation that the United States, Britain, West Germany, and Sweden forged from the late 1960's to the 1980's to protect citizens from unwanted computer dissemination of personal information. Drawing on an extensive body of interviews and documentary evidence, Bennett considers how the four countries, each with different cultural traditions and institutions, formulated fair information policy. He finds that their computer regulatory laws are based on strikingly similar statutory principles, but that enforcement of these principles varies considerably: the United States relies on citizen initiative and judicial enforcement; Britain uses a registration system; Germany has installed an ombudsman; and Sweden employs a licensing system. Tracing the impact of key social, political, and technological factors on the ways different political systems have controlled the collection and communication of information, Bennett also deepens our understanding of policymaking theory. Regulating Privacy will be welcomed by political sciences-especially those working in comparative public policy, American politics, organization theory, and technology and politics-political economists, information systems analysts, and others concerned with issues of privacy.

The work of a multidisciplinary research team, Transparent Lives explains how surveillance is expanding—mostly unchecked—into every facet of our lives. Although many Canadians are aware that government agencies are able to conduct mass surveillance using phone and online data, relatively few of us recognize the extent to which our privacy has been invaded by routine forms of monitoring. We cannot walk down a city street, attend a class, pay with a credit card, hop on an airplane, or make a phone call without data being captured and processed. Where does such information go, and who makes use of it? Who gains, and who loses? The New Transparency Project set out to investigate the myriad of ways in which both government and private sector organizations gather, monitor, analyze, and share information about ordinary citizens. This research, which extended over several years, culminated in the identification of nine key trends in the contemporary practice of surveillance—trends that, together, raise urgent questions of both privacy and social justice. Perhaps the loss of control over our personal information is merely the price we pay for using social media and other forms of electronic communication. Or should we instead be wary of systems that make us visible, and thus vulnerable, to others as never before? Transparent Lives is intended to inform policymakers, journalists, civil liberties groups, and educators about the current state of surveillance in Canada. Above all, though, it aims to alert unsuspecting citizens to the ubiquitous and largely invisible practices of monitoring that surround them.

Few sites are more symbolic of both the opportunities and vulnerabilities of contemporary globalization than the international airport. Politics at the Airport brings together leading scholars to examine how airports both shape and are shaped by current political, social, and economic conditions. Focusing on the ways that airports have become securitized, the essays address a wide range of practices and technologies-from architecture, biometric identification, and CCTV systems to "no-fly lists" and the privatization of border control-now being deployed to frame the social sorting of safe and potentially dangerous travelers. This provocative volume broadens our understanding of the connections among power, space, bureaucracy, and migration while establishing the airport as critical to the study of politics and global life. Contributors: Peter Adey, Colin J. Bennett, Gillian Fuller, Francisco R. Klauser, Gallya Lahav, David Lyon, Benjamin J. Muller, Valerie November, Jean Ruegg.

Analyzes privacy policy instruments available to contemporary industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy enhancing technologies. 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.

As the world moves into the twenty-first century, cellular systems, high-density data storage, and the Internet are but a few of the new technologies that promise great advances in productivity and improvements in the quality of life. Yet these new technologies also threaten personal privacy. A surveillance society, in which the individual has little control over personal information, may be the logical result of deregulation, globalization, and a mass data-processing capacity. Consumers report increasing concern over erosion of personal privacy even as they volunteer personal information in exchange for coupons, catalogues, and credit. What kind of privacy future are we facing? In Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age, some of the most prominent international theorists and practitioners in the field explore the impact of evolving technology on private citizens. The authors critically probe market, ethical, global, regulatory and advocacy issues, as each answers the question, 'How can we develop privacy solutions equal to the surveillance challenges of the future?'