Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy / Edition 1

by Abraham L. Newman

Overview

From credit-card purchases to electronic fingerprints, the amount of personal data available to government and business is growing exponentially. All industrial societies face the problem of how to regulate this vast world of information, but their governments have chosen distinctly different solutions. In Protectors of Privacy, Abraham L. Newman details how and why, in contrast to the United States, the nations of the European Union adopted comprehensive data privacy for both the public and the private sectors, enforceable by independent regulatory agencies known as data privacy authorities. Despite U.S. prominence in data technology, Newman shows, the strict privacy rules of the European Union have been adopted far more broadly across the globe than the self-regulatory approach championed by the United States. This rift has led to a series of trade and security disputes between the United States and the European Union.

Based on many interviews with politicians, civil servants, and representatives from business and NGOs, and supplemented with archival sources, statistical analysis, and examples, Protectors of Privacy delineates the two principal types of privacy regimes-comprehensive and limited. The book presents a theory of regulatory development that highlights the role of transgovernmental networks not only in implementing rules but also in actively shaping the political process surrounding policymaking. More broadly, Newman explains how Europe's institutional revolution has created in certain sectors the regulatory capacity that allows it to challenge U.S. dominance in international economic governance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801445491
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Abraham L. Newman is Assistant Professor in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He is the coeditor of How Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution?: National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Data Privacy and the Global Economy     1
Privacy Regimes: Comprehensive and Limited Approaches     23
The Computer Age: Similar Problems, Different Solutions     42
The EU Data Privacy Directive: Transgovernmental Actors as Drivers of Regional Integration     74
The Spread of Comprehensive Rules: The International Implications of the Regulatory State     99
The Struggle over Transnational Civil Liberties     123
Regulatory Power in the Global Economy     142
Notes     157
Bibliography     197
Index     215

What People are Saying About This

Michael E. Smith

Protectors of Privacy deals with an increasingly important issue that cuts across international security, international political economy, international law, and comparative political economy. Abraham L. Newman offers an intriguing argument involving the general role of 'regulatory power' and the specific role of the European Union in world politics.

Editorial Reviews

"Protectors of Privacy deals with an increasingly important issue that cuts across international security, international political economy, international law, and comparative political economy. Abraham L. Newman offers an intriguing argument involving the general role of 'regulatory power' and the specific role of the European Union in world politics."

Michael E. Smith

"Protectors of Privacy deals with an increasingly important issue that cuts across international security, international political economy, international law, and comparative political economy. Abraham L. Newman offers an intriguing argument involving the general role of 'regulatory power' and the specific role of the European Union in world politics."—Michael E. Smith, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

"Protectors of Privacy deals with the regulation of personal information held by governments and firms. Abraham L. Newman offers a first-class and cogently argued analysis of data privacy rules in the United States, France, and Germany."—Mark Thatcher, London School of Economics and Political Science

From the Publisher