1st Edition

The Governance of Privacy Policy Instruments in Global Perspective

By Colin J. Bennett, Charles D. Raab Copyright 2003

    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.

    Contents: Introduction. Policy Goals: The privacy paradigm; Privacy protection as social policy; Privacy protection: promoting trust and managing risk. Policy Instruments: Transnational policy instruments; Legal instruments and regulatory agencies; Self-regulatory instruments; Technological instruments. Policy Impacts: Privacy regimes; The evaluation of impact; International privacy protection: a race to the top, the bottom, or somewhere else?; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Colin J. Bennett, Charles D. Raab

    '...required reading for those of us seriously concerned about the politics of privacy and data protection in the global information age.' David H. Flaherty, formerly Information and Privacy Commissioner, British Columbia, Canada 'A tour de force. In this book, two political scientists present the results of their last decade of scrutiny of information privacy regulatory practices...This book also offers an extremely insightful analysis among different dimensions of information privacy laws in different countries.' Paul M. Schwartz, Brooklyn Law School, USA '...should be required reading for any serious student or practitioner concerned about the privacy of personal information in our globally networked society.' William H. Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute, UK '...a fresh and direct approach to the issues at stake...They leave the reader with the recognition that privacy protection is indissolubly bound up with social and economic policy issues of modern society.' Anne Carblanc, Principal Administrator, OECD '...Bennett and Raab's book deserves to be sidely read. It offers the most careful analysis we have of the range of actors involved and the tools in use in the governance of privac both nationally and globally. The book sets out more clearly than previous writings just how coercive state regulation is...' Public Administration 'For readers who want to begin thinking about privacy critically this is a fine place to start. The text is thorough in its coverage and citation...What is refreshingly absent is the ad nauseam recounting of privacy debacles or episodes that pepper so many of the other works in the area...several chapters would serve as excellent reading in any course related to information privacy, information policy, information ethics, etc...' Journal of Information Ethics