Proection of Personal Data: A Cross-National Overview

这里提出的是一项合作研究，研究九个国家隐私保护措施的历史和当前形式的相似和差异。在过去的30年里，世界上几乎所有的自由民主国家都采用了隐私法，旨在使普通公民能够对政府和私人组织自己创建、挪用和使用数据文件进行一定程度的控制。在这里提出的项目中，九名隐私专家将各自简要概述这类措施在他或她的国家的演变和鲜明特点。这些长达一章的研究报告将经过认真协调和编辑，以解决与关注科学、技术和社会的交叉有关的核心问题。这些问题包括：每个国家动员了哪些团体和利益集团支持和反对隐私保护法规？这些措施的推动力是来自戏剧性的公众争议(如水门事件)，还是来自一些更渐进的政治事态发展？每个国家的隐私法背后的关键原则来自哪里？是否有证据表明，世界这些地区国家的隐私法规中存在着独特的“亚洲价值观”(或欧洲或北美价值观)的影响？隐私法律和政策是否明显改变了每个国家的主要个人信息流？制定隐私立法或政策的努力在哪里受阻？隐私增强技术是否在很大程度上得到了部署，它们是否成功了？回答这些问题的信息应该提供一个信息量很大的肖像，说明基本上是全球性的隐私保护想法在每个国家是如何表现出来的。它还应该至少为更抽象、更具理论色彩的问题提供答案，包括以下问题：世界各地的隐私政策是否都集中在一套原则上，或者国家之间的差异有望持续下去？例如，与当今美国流行的模式背道而驰的国家，最终会屈从于压力，效仿美国在这方面的政策吗？早期有影响力的隐私原则准则，如经合组织的指导方针，实际上经受住了与反恐战争和个人数据商业市场崛起等趋势相关的对个人数据的强烈需求的兴起吗？以书籍的形式创作和出版这些论文的目的是使非专家能够接触和理解一个长期以来不必要地晦涩难懂的调查和决策领域。它应该说出世界各地非专家的担忧，他们想知道隐私是否以及如何在自己的国家得到更充分的保护，或以不同的方式得到保护。它应该成为每个隐私价值很重要的国家进行公共辩论和制定政策的资源。这些国家不仅包括像案例研究所涵盖的那些拥有完善隐私立法的国家，还包括许多可能在不久的将来首次采用隐私法规的国家。

Proposed here is a collaborative study of parallels and differences in the history and current form of privacy protection measures in nine countries. Over the last thirty years, virtually all of the world's liberal democracies have adopted privacy codes aimed at enabling ordinary citizens to exercise some control over creation, appropriation and use of data files on themselves by government and private organizations. In the project proposed here, nine privacy specialists will each develop a succinct overview of the evolution and distinctive character of such measures in his or her country. These chapter-length studies will be carefully coordinated and edited so as to address a core of questions vital to concerns about the intersections of science, technology and society. These questions include: What groups and interests in each country have mobilized for and against privacy protection codes? Has the impetus for such measures stemmed from dramatic public controversies (as in Watergate) or from some more incremental political developments? Where are key principles underlying each nation's privacy codes drawn from? Is there any evidence for influence of distinctively "Asian values" (or European or North American values) in the privacy codes of countries in these parts of the world? Have privacy laws and policies demonstrably altered the main flows of personal information in each country? Where have efforts to create privacy legislation or policy been blocked? Have privacy-enhancing technologies been deployed to any significant extent, and have they been successful? Information in response to these queries should provide a highly informative portrait of how the essentially global ideas of privacy protection are manifesting themselves in each country. It should also afford at least the beginnings of answers to more abstract, theoretically charged questions including the following: Are privacy policies around the world converging on a single set of principles, or do national differences promise to endure? Are countries that diverge from patterns prevailing in the U.S. today, for example, bound ultimately to succumb to pressures to emulate its policies in this connection? Have early and influential codes of privacy principles such as the OECD guidelines in fact withstood subjection to the rise of forceful demands for personal data associated with such trends as the war on terrorism and the rise of commercial markets for personal data? Creation and publication of these essays in book form is intended to make accessible and comprehensible to non-specialists a domain of inquiry and policy-making that has long been needlessly obscure. It should speak to the concerns of non-specialists everywhere who wonder whether and how privacy might be protected more fully, or in different ways, in their own countries. It should serve as a resource for public debate and policy-making in every country where privacy values are important. These include not only countries with well-developed privacy legislation like those covered in the case studies, but also the many countries likely to adopt privacy codes for the first time in the near future.