Governmental Surveillance and Bureaucratic Accountability: Data Protection Agencies in Western Societies

Flaherty, David H.

doi:10.1177/027046768601100102

Cited by 10 publications

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“…Beyond that lies the treacherous ground of a comparative implementation study. Although it is too early to assess the evidence in most countries, the early work of Flaherty (1985Flaherty ( , 1986 suggests that data protection authorities have a highly problematic role. Caught between high public expectations and bureaucratic resistance, they require a rare blend of leadership, professional and technical expertise, and favourable public opinion to succeed in their sensitive and complex tasks.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regulating the computer: comparing policy instruments in Europe and the United States

Bennett¹

1988

European J Political Res

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Abstract. The introduction of information technology to governmental agencies has raised considerable concern for the erosion of personal privacy in most advanced democratic states. This article compares and tries to explain the choice of policy instrument in four key countries (Sweden, the United States, West Germany and the United Kingdom) to enforce the protection of personal data. Five options were available from the ‘international repertoire’ of solutions: voluntary control, subject control, licensing, a data commissioner and registration. The Swedes opted for licensing, the Americans rely on subject control, the Germans established a data commissioner and the British chose a registration scheme. In no state, however, were these decisions made from a synoptic analysis of all possible options. Nor did a process of policy diffusion occur. Rather, a combination of domestic constraints seemed to filter out unacceptable options and produce a bias in favour of the resulting policy instrument. In the United States and Sweden, this bias resulted from perceived constitutional imperatives; in West Germany and Britain, the position and power of the respective national bureaucracies produced stiff resistance, a conflictual policy process and resulting policy instruments with few, if any, precedents in their respective systems.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regulating the computer: comparing policy instruments in Europe and the United States

Bennett¹

1988

European J Political Res

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“…1 For comparative analysis of several data protection policies and their 2 The difficulties of defining a general right of privacy have been widely noted. implementation, see : Flaherty 1986and 1989. Warren and Brandeis (1890, in the earliest modern thinking on the subject, defined the right to privacy as the "right to be let alone."…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For British legal and philosophical thinking on the meaning of privacy see: Neil1 1962;Sieghart 1977;Taylor 1971;and Winfield 1931. 3 These two approaches are developed more fully in Regan 1981, Ch. 3 "TWO Political Approaches to Personal Information Policy." Flaherty (1986 and1989) somewhat similarly categorizes three models of data protection legislationthe Swedish model with enforcement by a regulatory agency, the German model with an advisory agency, and the American model with civil suits. Despite these different approaches or models, the policies of all countries have contained similar "fair information principles."…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting Privacy and Controlling Bureaucracies: Constraints of British Constitutional Principles

Regan¹

1990

Governance

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In the early 1960s, Western democracies began to confront the policy implications of a similar phenomenon: the computerization of personal information by large bureaucratic organizations. By 1978, the United States, Canada, and the major Western European countries had all adopted legislation to regulate the personal information practices of bureaucracies and to protect the privacy of individuals.' Britain, however, did not adopt legislation until 1984. As the oldest modern democracy, and one that has traditionally valued individual privacy, this appears puzzling. Why was Britain comparatively late in protecting a cherished value threatened by technological change?The answer is not that British policymakers ignored the issue. Indeed, policy discussions occurred for over twenty years. Nor was it that policymakers decided that existing protections were adequate. On the contrary, the need for new protections was widely recognized. Starting in 1961, a series of "right of privacy" and "data surveillance" bills were introduced and briefly discussed in Parliament. By 1970, increasing legislative support for policy action convinced the Labour government to establish both a Committee on Privacy to investigate privacy invasions in the private sector, and an interdepartmental committee to review computerized information systems in government departments. These investigations led to publication of a committee report in 1972 and a White Paper in 1975, and the establishment of the Committee on Data Protection in 1976. This committee's recommendations were reported in 1978. Four years later, the Conservative government responded with a White Paper, and in 1984 legislation was passed.Why, then, did the British government, regardless of the party in power and despite numerous proposals, founder in adopting policy? The argument made here is that the two proposed policy approaches conflicted with constitutional principles. The civil liberties approachwhich gives individuals positive rights with respect to personal information and places the courts in the role of resolving disputes between individuals and organizationsconflicted with the British tradition of protecting individual rights and the restrained role of the British courts. The i n~o r~u~i o n

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“… 7. The Data Act ( datalagen ), which also established the national Data Inspection Authority, was passed after a series of investigations about ‘computers and privacy’ following debates surrounding the 1970 census (Flaherty, 1986: 7–8). …”

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confidence: 99%

Impossible, unknowable, accountable: Dramas and dilemmas of data law

Cool

2019

Soc Stud Sci

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On May 25, 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. EU citizens are granted more control over personal data while companies and organizations are charged with increased responsibility enshrined in broad principles like transparency and accountability. Given the scope of the regulation, which aims to harmonize data practices across 28 member states with different concerns about data collection, the GDPR has significant consequences for individuals in the EU and globally. While the GDPR is primarily intended to regulate tech companies, it also has important implications for data use in scientific research. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with researchers, lawyers and legal scholars in Sweden, I argue that the GDPR’s flexible accountability principle effectively encourages researchers to reflect on their ethical responsibility but can also become a source of anxiety and produce unexpected results. Many researchers I spoke with expressed profound uncertainty about ‘impossible’ legal requirements for research data use. Despite the availability of legal texts and interpretations, I suggest we should take researchers’ concerns about ‘unknowable’ data law seriously. Many researchers’ sense of legal ambiguity led them to rethink their data practices and themselves as ethical subjects through an orientation to what they imagined as the ‘real people behind the data’, variously formulated as a Swedish population desiring data use for social benefit or a transnational public eager for research results. The intentions attributed to people, populations and publics – whom researchers only encountered in the abstract form of data – lent ethical weight to various and sometimes conflicting decisions about data security and sharing. Ultimately, researchers’ anxieties about their inability to discern the desires of the ‘real people’ lent new appeal to solutions, however flawed, that promised to alleviate the ethical burden of personal data.

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Governmental Surveillance and Bureaucratic Accountability: Data Protection Agencies in Western Societies

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Regulating the computer: comparing policy instruments in Europe and the United States

Regulating the computer: comparing policy instruments in Europe and the United States

Protecting Privacy and Controlling Bureaucracies: Constraints of British Constitutional Principles

Impossible, unknowable, accountable: Dramas and dilemmas of data law

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