Rule, James B. --- "Introduction" [2008] ELECD 396; in Rule, B. James (ed), "Global Privacy Protection" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Global Privacy Protection

Editor(s): Rule, B. James

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440630

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Rule, James B.

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

Introduction
James B. Rule
Public issues are like living creatures. They have life-cycles ­ beginnings,
middles and (eventually) ends. Issues are typically the offspring of non-issues:
things that people once considered trivial, normal or inevitable, but which they
redefine as unacceptable, even intolerable, and susceptible to change. Very
often these transitions into issue-hood are the work of social movements that
publicize and condemn what they hold to be scandalous conditions ­ as in the
public definition of sexual harassment as a condition requiring remedial action
in law and policy. Other issues `just grow', as people come to agree even with-
out exhortation that certain conditions, perhaps of long standing, are no longer
acceptable. Whatever their origins, public issues are defined by their contested
nature ­ their acknowledged status as matters on which people have to take
stands for or against change.
This book traces the birth and early history of privacy, and the need for its
protection, as a public issue. Privacy is an inexact term, one that gets applied
to a variety of related concerns. We focus here on controversies over the fate
of personal data held by government and private institutions in conventional
or computerized files. Since roughly the 1960s, such privacy concerns have
risen to the state of issue-hood in virtually all the world's democracies. At
stake are such questions as what personal information institutions may collect,
where and how it can be stored, who can gain access to it, and what actions
can be ...