The politics of privacy in the cyber age: a study of corporate influence over Internet privacy regulations

信息和通信技术的发展对个人数据和互联网隐私的保护产生了深远的影响。最近发生的事件，如The Face Book-Cambridge Analytica丑闻，表明政府和企业现在拥有前所未有的能力来收集、操纵甚至出售有关个人习惯的信息。全球互联网隐私监管由谁来管理？我的博士项目试图通过研究企业利益在全球层面塑造数据和隐私法规方面所起的作用来回答这个问题。强大的公司利益在多大程度上主导着全球隐私法规，或者这些法规反映了更广泛的社会利益？我建议在确定全球互联网隐私法规的“重点监管机构”的背景下对这些问题进行实证检验，这些机构是：互联网名称与数字地址分配机构(ICANN)、万维网联盟(W3C)和互联网协会。我的核心论点是，企业利益的优势资源，如更多的财务和与政策相关的信息，是影响全球数据保护标准的充分条件，但不是必要条件。相反，资源如何转化为影响力在很大程度上取决于制度机会(参与决策过程的程度)和问题的显着性(公众对具体监管问题的关注程度)。

The evolving nature of information and communicationstechnology profoundly impacts the protection of personaldata and Internet privacy. Recent events, such as theFacebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, have shown thatgovernments and corporations now have an unprecedentedability to collect, manipulate, and even sell informationabout personal habits. Who governs global Internet privacyregulations? My Ph.D. project seeks to answer this questionby examining the role played by corporate interests inshaping data and privacy regulations at the global level. Towhat extent do powerful corporate interests dominateglobal privacy regulations or do these regulations reflectthe interests of a broader range of societal interests? Ipropose an empirical examination of these questions in thecontext of the ''focal regulatory agencies'' that determineInternet privacy regulations at the global level: namely,Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and InternetSociety. My central argument is that the superior resourcesof corporate interests, like greater finances and policyrelevant information, are sufficient but not necessaryconditions for influencing global data protection standards.Instead, how resources get translated into influencedepends largely on institutional opportunity (the amount ofaccess to decision-making processes) and issue salience(the amount of public attention given to specific regulatoryissues).