Rule, James B. --- "Conclusion" [2008] ELECD 405; 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: Conclusion

Author(s): Rule, James B.

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

Conclusion
James B. Rule
`All politics is local', goes the familiar wisdom among American politicos.
The chapters of this book often seem to support this adage where the politics
of privacy are concerned. In the seven countries depicted here ­ as in many
others ­ the emergence and evolution of privacy as a public issue has often
been idiosyncratic, to say the least. In some cases, it has turned on events and
episodes that one cannot imagine happening anywhere else.
True, one can identify an archetypal state of mind underlying all demands
for privacy protection. This is the gut-level indignation that flares on learning
that outside interests have gained access to, or use of, what we consider `our
own' information. Regardless of whether the outsiders are the police, the tax
authorities, credit reporters or direct marketers, this core reaction goes, `how
did they get my information?' And, `what gives them the right to act on this
private data, without my permission?'
Yet we have seen that very different situations ­ very different juxtaposi-
tions of individual lives and institutional demands ­ trigger such reactions in
different countries. Forms and uses of personal data that would fan the fires of
public protest in one country meet with routine acquiescence elsewhere.
Institutions whose efforts to acquire and use personal data are accepted with-
out note in one setting spark bitter controversy in other national settings. And
these differing `flash points' leave their marks on privacy regimes prevailing
in each country, long after the critical moments ...