Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology ... - The ICHRP

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series of problems highlighted here – the destabilisation or reconfiguration of personal boundaries, of the boundary between private and public, and of that between the national and international. It is likewise unclear how a state-centric human rights system can address the asymmetries produced by massive transnational data flows. The present report has not systematically addressed the shortcomings of relevant human rights laws in each relevant domain. A next research step might aim to delineate these more precisely and also to suggest whether and how a human rights or other normative armature might be reconfigured to better address the anxieties and vulnerabilities identified here. The present Discussion Paper has suggested that the contemporary predicament in this domain is marked primarily by its novelty; that it has opened a gap at the normative level; and that addressing that gap will require resort to a new normative architecture, one better equipped to challenge the twin drivers of efficiency and security. 74 Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology, Human Rights
Conclusion This Discussion Paper has suggested that the anxieties associated with contemporary data collection are profound and important but that they are not easily articulated in human rights terms or addressed through the “right to privacy”. This is in part because the legal articulation of the right to privacy is ill-suited to these anxieties and is likely to achieve little beyond, perhaps, providing reassurance that “something is being done”. A larger claim is also made, however: that the contemporary experience of data accumulation is transforming our notions of privacy beyond recognition, exposing the instability of the philosophical and ideological base upon which it sits, and rendering it nugatory. In particular, the claims to autonomy upon which privacy is premised – and that it is intended to secure and that always functioned rather as a “regulative idea” than an achieved state – look increasingly insecure. Not only do we have little or no control over the data that is collected about us, we do not even control data we generate about ourselves. Recent trends have weakened our sense of control in many respects while obliging us to recognize that our “control” was rarely in any case more than aspirational. The degree to which these developments affect individuals varies widely. In terms of specificity, however, the effect is probably best characterised as an effective or seeming loss of autonomy: the production of vulnerability or precariousness in individuals. Four possible factors might be identified that are relevant in this respect and that might be located as contributory causes of anxiety, and potentially cumulative sources of individual vulnerability: The degree to which individuals willingly project themselves into the dataverse or find themselves progressively extending personal data into the public sphere through the everyday processes of daily life (banking, purchasing, travelling, and so on). We might call this the specific gravity of the dataverse. a. The degree to which individuals are subject to proactive surveillance, both public and private. As we have seen this is today extensive, and while regulations may exist governing the available means of data collection and the circumstances of data retention and use, these regulations have not impeded an exponential expansion in data collection itself. Moreover, the normative base for restricting data collection of this sort itself appears uncertain at this time. b. The degree to which individuals fit certain profiles or data categories, and to which those categories escape the prohibitions of human rights law or the restrictions of data protection law (under which they are treated as “special categories” of data); the degree to which such profiles are mobilised in ways that affect individuals substantively. c. The degree of data asymmetry between individuals and data processing bodies, public or private: this may in turn be a function of the territory in which individuals live or the availability of a legal framework to safeguard their interests. As we have seen, informational asymmetry is central to contemporary data collection – in the private as well as the public sphere – and a pervasive source of anxiety. The right to privacy has not proved very useful in tackling the informational asymmetries and vulnerabilities identified here. This is in part because, in its earliest incarnation (as a Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology, Human Rights 75
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Navigating the Dataverse Privacy, T
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Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy,
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Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy,
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Contents Acknowledgements Executive
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Acknowledgements This Discussion Pa
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As to the first, the Discussion Pap
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contesting profiles so long as cert
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▪ Human rights organisations can
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gathering technologies as illustrat
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information is extensively gathered
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themselves were reproduced in onlin
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I. A Short History of Privacy Altho
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property. 20 This establishes the l
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Privacy must be viewed as an ideal
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During the 1980s, partly as a resul
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e removed merely by an effort of cl
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II. The Privacy-Technology Dynamic
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dataverse. Not only are there many
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internet, when it arrived shortly t
Page 41 and 42: simply are not - they don’t exist
Page 43 and 44: III. Security and Surveillance Havi
Page 45 and 46: When we talk about state surveillan
Page 47 and 48: stimulation of economic activity. S
Page 49 and 50: Digital Personhood How should we th
Page 51 and 52: Identity is therefore unitary and a
Page 53 and 54: IV. Privacy across Borders: Persona
Page 55 and 56: Where research on communications an
Page 57 and 58: The Expanding Dataverse Biometric I
Page 59 and 60: peoples of most countries, enormous
Page 61 and 62: Such protections do not shield indi
Page 63 and 64: V. Law, Privacy, Profiling This Dis
Page 65 and 66: Griswold set the pattern for one br
Page 67 and 68: terrorist”. 144 In Posner’s vie
Page 69 and 70: ut it has not so far accepted that
Page 71 and 72: 2. The Court turned to the practice
Page 73 and 74: normative statements on the substan
Page 75 and 76: individual may have multiple profil
Page 77 and 78: Let’s take another example: “ri
Page 79 and 80: VI. Boundaries and Borders We have
Page 81 and 82: process” to empirical research in
Page 83 and 84: As a result, communicational pruden
Page 85 and 86: Business School: “The amount of p
Page 87 and 88: the domain of international law. In
Page 89 and 90: A U.S. Secret Service liaison poste
Page 91: examples to the experience of a sho
Page 95: The rise of contemporary data harve
Page 100: This ICHRP Discussion Paper examine
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