Privacy and the Information Age

by Serge Gutwirth, Raf Casert (Translator)

Overview

In a time in which new technologies make it easy to gather and process data, the discussion on privacy tends to focus exclusively on the protecting of personal data. To Serge Gutwirth, privacy involves far more. He advances the intriguing thesis that privacy is in fact the safeguard of personal freedom—the safeguard of the individual's freedom to decide who she or he is, what she or he does, and who knows about it. Any restriction on privacy thus means an infringement of personal freedom. And it's exactly this freedom that plays an essential role in every democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742517462
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/22/2001
Series:	Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Serge Gutwirth is professor of law at the Free University of Brussels and the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The Rathenau Institute, the Dutch national technology assessment organization, is an independent organization and is one of the institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Privacy's Complexities
Chapter 3 The Law on Privacy
Chapter 4 Ambiguous Privacy
Chapter 5 Privacy Endangered
Chapter 6 Privacy and the Processing of Personal Data
Chapter 7 Conclusion
Chapter 8 Appendix: The European Community Directive on Personal Data
Chapter 9 Bibliography
Chapter 10 Index

Editorial Reviews

Serge Gutwirth impressively draws on Dutch, German, French, and English language sources to develop a strong argument regarding the centrality of privacy to personal freedom and the challenges to that sacred connection posed by new, and increasingly omniscient, information technologies. A most welcome addition to the comparative literature on privacy and technology.

Gary T. Marx

Serge Gutwirth impressively draws on Dutch, German, French, and English language sources to develop a strong argument regarding the centrality of privacy to personal freedom and the challenges to that sacred connection posed by new, and increasingly omniscient, information technologies. A most welcome addition to the comparative literature on privacy and technology.--Gary T. Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology

From the Publisher