Search results

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Series Preface -- Introduction -- PART I: THE TIME DIMENSION: PERSPECTIVES FROM HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION AND TECHNOLOGY LAW -- 1 Privacy in Eighteenth-Century Aleppo: The Limits of Cultural Ideals -- 2 An Introduction to Stanner's Concept of Privacy -- 3 Privacy. An Intercultural Perspective -- 4 Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective -- 5 Privacy, Technology Law and Religions across Cultures

The European laws surveilling surveillance may possibly soon become more complex or more uncertain, depending on developments during the next 12-36 months. On the 25th January 2012 the European Commission published two, not one, proposals for new legislation in the ever-growing field of privacy and data protection. One of these two proposals is the mildly-named but potent "Regulation" covering most sectors of activity except for the law enforcement and criminal justice sectors which are proposed to be governed by a separate Directive. Both the Article 29 Working Party and the European Data Protection Supervisor in March 2012 overall welcomed the Draft Regulation, whereas they strongly criticised the Draft Directive which is regarded as being greatly inferior to the Draft Regulation. This level of criticism begs a number of important questions: why is the police and justice sector being handled differently and separately from other sectors? Why does the current (1995) data protection directive allegedly lead to fragmentation to the extent that in 2012 the Commission proposes a Regulation to replace it yet at the same time, almost in the same breath, in 2012 and still in 2013, it is proposing that the Police and Criminal Justice sector be regulated by a Directive? Would the new Directive on Police use of personal data not produce the same level of fragmentation as the old 1995 Directive did in other sectors? Is this not inconsistent? This paper examines whether these new laws are fit-for-purpose by first laying out the realities that the law must presumably set out to regulate. It then examines the problems with the logic and indeed the credibility of some answers provided publicly by the European Commission. After dealing with the logical inconsistencies implicit in the current approach, the paper questions the usefulness of the Draft Directive from a substantive point of view and especially in the wake of the Snowden revelations about the modalities of surveillance being employed world-wide. Utilising summary findings from the PUPIE project, this paper makes the point that, in fact, most of the principles of the Draft Directive are already provided for in the laws of many EU member states so the degree of legislative innovation being proposed is questionable, the harmonization benefits may be minimal, while the allegedly undesirable fragmentation will remain. The paper then traces how, since May 2013, the European debate on data protection was overtaken by,and now benefits from, the revelations made by Edward Snowden. It demonstrates the relative legal impotence of the EU in such matters on account of the fact that matters of national security are reserved to national governments by virtue of Article 4 (2) of the EU Treaty. After analyzing the relevant developments to end October 2013 the paper concludes that the most suitable, and possibly - though not necessarily - the most likely option to European policy-makers is that of pushing for a new Council of Europe convention on Cyber-Security in an effort to balance the privacy and security interests inherent to a debate about surveillance. ; peer-reviewed

The European laws surveilling surveillance may possibly soon become more complex or more uncertain, depending on developments during the next 12-36 months.On the 25th January 2012 the European Commission published two, not one, proposals for new legislation in the ever-growing field of privacy and data protection. One of these two proposals is the mildly-named but potent "Regulation" covering most sectors of activity except for the law enforcement and criminal justice sectors which are proposed to be governed by a separate Directive. Both the Article 29 Working Party and the European Data Protection Supervisor in March 2012 overall welcomed the Draft Regulation, whereas they strongly criticised the Draft Directive which is regarded as being greatly inferior to the Draft Regulation. This level of criticism begs a number of important questions: why is the police and justice sector being handled differently and separately from other sectors? Why does the current (1995) data protection directive allegedly lead to fragmentation to the extent that in 2012 the Commission proposes a Regulation to replace it yet at the same time, almost in the same breath, in 2012 and still in 2013, it is proposing that the Police and Criminal Justice sector be regulated by a Directive? Would the new Directive on Police use of personal data not produce the same level of fragmentation as the old 1995 Directive did in other sectors? Is this not inconsistent? This paper examines whether these new laws are fit-for-purpose by first laying out the realities that the law must presumably set out to regulate. It then examines the problems with the logic and indeed the credibility of some answers provided publicly by the European Commission. After dealing with the logical inconsistencies implicit in the current approach, the paper questions the usefulness of the Draft Directive from a substantive point of view and especially in the wake of the Snowden revelations about the modalities of surveillance being employed world-wide. Utilising summary findings from the PUPIE project, this paper makes the point that, in fact, most of the principles of the Draft Directive are already provided for in the laws of many EU member states so the degree of legislative innovation being proposed is questionable, the harmonization benefits may be minimal, while the allegedly undesirable fragmentation will remain. The paper then traces how, since May 2013, the European debate on data protection was overtaken by,and now benefits from, the revelations made by Edward Snowden. It demonstrates the relative legal impotence of the EU in such matters on account of the fact that matters of national security are reserved to national governments by virtue of Article 4 (2) of the EU Treaty. After analyzing the relevant developments to end October 2013 the paper concludes that the most suitable, and possibly - though not necessarily - the most likely option to European policy-makers is that of pushing for a new Council of Europe convention on Cyber-Security in an effort to balance the privacy and security interests inherent to a debate about surveillance.

This study has been drawn up in the context of a consultancy contract between the Council of Europe represented by Mr Jorg Polakiewicz, Head of the Law Reform Department, Directorate of Standard Setting, Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs and Dr. Joseph Cannataci, Professor of Technology Law and Director of the Centre of Law, Information & Converging Technologies, University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, hereinafter referred to as "the Consultant". Dr. J. Cannataci was requested to prepare a study in Recommendation No R(87) 15 of 17 of 17 September 1987 regulating the use of personal data in the police sector and to suggest proposals for the revision of the above Recommendation. The Consultant was requested to identify, in particular: "whether the current scope of application provides the necessary levels of safeguards for the personal data processing in the light of emerging new actors involved in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties as well as in the light of the use of new practices and technologies; the fields where specific problems may arise from the point of view of the application of data protection principles and, in particular, the field of the use of personal data in the police sector. The Consultant shall also consider to what extent the provision of the Convention for Protection of Individual with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (ETS No 108) and the abovementioned recommendation cover the current preoccupations and expectations." In his report, the Consultant was required to include an appendix containing a set of proposals for amendments to the existing provision or for drafting additional provisions. ; peer-reviewed

The freedom to receive and impart information, privacy and the freedom from discrimination on grounds of religious belief are universally recognised as fundamental human rights and, as such, also form part of the basic values of democratic societies. These rights have, in the main, only been adequately articulated and increasingly protected at the international level after the Second World War, relatively very late in more than seven thousand years of civilization In contrast, the values promoted by religions have often been recognised as such for millennia. Where do the values of privacy law and religions conflict and where do they converge, especially in a world where information technology is ubiquitous? The paper examines the debate over privacy from various perspectives, identifying those areas where religions appear to have confronted issues of human rights and where lawyers have been joined in the debate by philosophers within the rapidly developing field of information ethics. It concludes by listing a minimum ten areas where religions may possibly contribute to the intercultural debate on privacy in the Information Society. ; peer-reviewed

The Reidenberg approach was both profound and practical: it took the trans-jurisdictional needs of medieval Europe which led to the birth of Lex Mercatoria and argued that the Internet requires as broad a sweep with the deliberate creation of a Lex Informatica. Without necessarily disagreeing with much of what Reidenberg and his followers have proposed, I would like, in this short contribution, to go one step further, and invite attention to an emerging field of law which I shall, for the sake of convenience, dub Lex Personalitatis. By this I mean the "Law of Personality" relating to personality rights in a much wider way than that understood by most common law-based commentators. The latter tend to divide personality rights into two broad camps: that of rights over commercial exploitation of image, name etc. and privacy rights….By proposing a composite concept of Lex Personalitatis I am seeking to go deeper and also encompass the underlying reasons for both image/identity-related rights and privacy-related rights. In essence, I am suggesting that we should be looking to a supreme value, the individual's fundamental right to unhindered (or free) development of his/her own personality. In this sense Lex Personalitatis is closer in conceptual definition to the German Persönlichkeitsrecht, and can be viewed as both a fundamental right (ius personalitatis) underpinning much of, and an integral component of, Lex Informatica. I would also suggest that legal cultural and language barriers have prevented much of the world from understanding the depth and value of German legal thinking on the matter over the past 50 years. The primary raison d'être of such complex legal provision is not however to permit the use of informatics for trade or leisure. The latter is more likely to be an intended by-product. Certainly "informatica" is important, indeed essential for "commercium" and hence Lex informatica is certainly very important, but I submit that the raison d'etre of the hierarchical structure in Romania just outlined above goes beyond Lex Informatica. It is the realisation that the supreme value at law is that of the right of dignity and free development of personality, i.e. the ius personalitatis that inspires and underpins such law. It is not unnatural for the post-communist countries to use their experience of systemic abuse of personal information in 50 years of pre-digital communism to nurture a more profound appreciation of why the flow of information in society is so important and consequently why its regulation must be subservient to the individual's right to the unhindered development of one's personality. In doing so in the Information Age, they are helping to develop a Lex Personalitatis the scope of which is broader than that encapsulated by the term "personality rights" in the Anglo-Saxon legal world. ; peer-reviewed

Interest in the relationship between law and technology has been growing steadily (albeit slowly) over recent years. This is perhaps inevitable in a society which is increasingly dependent on novel and constantly evolving technologies which are absorbed at an incredibly fast rate into our every-day life ; peer-reviewed

Introduction: New legal challenges of big data /Joe Cannataci, Valeria Falce and Oreste Pollicino --Big data and big databases between privacy and competition /Sofia Oliveira Pais --Competition challenges of big data : algorithmic collusion, personalised pricing and privacy /Antonio Capobianco and Pedro Gonzaga --Antitrust enforcement and privacy standards /Renato Nazzini --Mergers, data markets and competition /Damiano Canapa --Platform role and intermediary responsibility /Vicente Bagnoli --Global perspectives on big data and consumer law /Mateja Durovic and Franciszek Lech --Data as an input in competition law cases : standards, difficulties and biases in EU merger control /Rupprecht Podszun and Sarah Langenstein --Breaking down information silos with big data : a legal analysis of data sharing /Giovanni De Gregorio and Sofia Ranchordás --The relationship between freedom of expression and big data /Oleg Soldatov --Big data and children's rights : new legal challenges alongside new opportunities /Shulamit Almog and Liat Franco --Artificial intelligence in the big data era : risks and opportunities /Francesca Lagioia and Giovanni Sartor.

It is widely agreed that human rights should apply as much online as offline, and that freedom of expression and privacy should be no exception. But there are particular complexities in the online environment. This publication explores these issues in the context of UNESCO's new approach to Internet issues. The approach was adopted by our 195 Member States in November 2015, and is based on the Outcome Document of an earlier conference called CONNECTing the Dots. Concretely, this means that UNESCO stands for the concept of "Internet Universality" and the related "ROAM principles" which refer to a Human-rights-based, Open and Accessible Internet that is governed by Multi-stakeholder participation. It is in this context that the current study was commissioned to address very specific rights and associated values. In the digital age, the challenge is to see how tensions between rights operate in relation to the Internet, and therefore in relation to the ROAM principles. The purpose of the current research was precisely to unpack some of these issues. In particular, it probes the complex interplay on the Internet between the right to freedom of expression (and information), transparency, and the right to privacy. The research explores the boundaries of these rights, and the various modalities of reconciling and aligning them. The study analyses the legal framework, current mechanisms for balancing rights, and specific issues, cases and trends. As revealed by the research, traditional laws and regulations for the protection of privacy and freedom of expression often do not deal with digital issues. Also covered are the interplay and interactions between multiple players –e.g. the State agents, Internet users, ICT companies, civil society organizations, the judiciary and the security services. Various policy recommendations are made that address both key issues and various stakeholders groups. ; peer-reviewed

1995 is set to be a key year for the rules governing medical data in Europe: the Council of Europe is in the process of approving the final draft of a new Recommendation on the Protection of Medical Data while the member states of the European Union have adopted a directive on data protection. The paper wiIl present: i. some of the interim results of the University of Malta's LEXIMP 9 Project reporting on the extent to which the Council of Europe's 1981 Recommendation on Data Protection in the Medical sector was actually implemented in the 34 member states of the Council of Europe. This project includes a comparative analysis of specific rules, relevant case-law and other relevant regulations; ii. an ovenliew of the new Council of Europe Recommendation on Medical Data, specifically addressing confidentiality, access to data and information integrity; iii. the relevance of the EU Directive. ; peer-reviewed

Between November 2012 and September 2013, Joseph A. Cannataci responded to a brief commissioned by the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law of the Council of Europe. The initial work carried out to end December 2012 was subsequently revised and up-dated over the period Jan-Sep 2013 to reflect the impact of the developments over the European Commission's Data Protection Reform Package (DPRP) and increasingly that of the revelations of the US whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The concept paper finds that the urgency for and the onus upon the CoE to take immediate action to produce a new binding instrument is compounded by the Snowden revelations and the possible chronic inadequacy of EU responses in the sphere of national security on account of exclusions of competence by Art 4 Section 2 of the EU Treaty. ; peer-reviewed