Politics of Privacy

I´ve found this blog Politics of Privacy by Andreas Busch, who is a political scientist who teaches at the University of Oxford, member of The Centre for the Study of Democratic Government areas of interest are Comparative Public Policy and Political Economy.

He is presently working on a research project on the politics of privacy.

The Politics of Privacy (2004- )

Revolutionary technical innovations in the areas of telecommunication, data transmission and computerisation have changed the availability of data fundamentally. Today, any sort of data is in principle available anywhere and at anytime. At the same time the capacity for storing data has grown tremendously, and the fact that stored data can be digitally processed and linked to each other means that new data can be generated from very diverse sources of information, giving them a new quality.

How do different states and societies deal with this new situation? Who controls these data, who has access to them, what purpose can they be used for? What role do policy legacies, be they in the form of data protection laws or institutionalisation of privacy agencies, play? Do parties make a difference? And does the fight against terrorism after 9/11 mean that security has to take precedence over privacy?These are just some of the questions that I aim to deal with in my comparative study of the politics of privacy. As an experiment, I have started a weblog in which I present and discuss some of my ideas and findings. You're invited to visit it and comment!