Information society projects promise wealth and better services to those countries which digitise and encourage the consumer and citizen to participate. As paper recedes into the background and digital data becomes the primary resource in the information society, what does this mean for privacy? Can there be privacy when every communication made through ever-developing ubiquitous devices is recorded? Data protection legislation developed as a reply to large scale centralised databases which contained incorrect data and where data controllers denied access and refused to remedy information flaws. Some decades later the technical world is very different one, and whilst data protection remains important, the cries for more privacy-oriented regulation in commerce and eGov continue to rise. What factors should underpin the creation of new means of regulation? The papers in this collection have been drawn together to develop the positive and negative effects upon the information society which privacy regulation implies.

Vast amounts of data are nowadays collected, stored and processed, in an effort to assist in making a variety of administrative and governmental decisions. These innovative steps considerably improve the speed, effectiveness and quality of decisions. Analyses are increasingly performed by data mining and profiling technologies that statistically and automatically determine patterns and trends. However, when such practices lead to unwanted or unjustified selections, they may result in unacceptable forms of discrimination. Processing vast amounts of data may lead to situations in which data controllers know many of the characteristics, behaviors and whereabouts of people. In some cases, analysts might know more about individuals than these individuals know about themselves. Judging people by their digital identities sheds a different light on our views of privacy and data protection. This book discusses discrimination and privacy issues related to data mining and profiling practices. It provides technological and regulatory solutions, to problems which arise in these innovative contexts. The book explains that common measures for mitigating privacy and discrimination, such as access controls and anonymity, fail to properly resolve privacy and discrimination concerns. Therefore, new solutions, focusing on technology design, transparency and accountability are called for and set forth.

This book focuses around the social and ethic issues that companies face everyday in doing business. It is a collection of 37 articles from experts in the social issues of computing, exploring the most pressing issues in information technology today. The chapters are fresh, informative, timely, and authoritative.The readings cover such themes as views of computing, the information society, computers and organizations, computer-based monitoring, security and reliability, and privacy, ethics, and the internet.A book from a leading author in the IT field, this collection of articles is an excellent resource for computer-based business owners, managers, and employees. Its excellent section on the Internet makes this a must-read for owners/managers of Internet-based businesses.

Privacy is a concept that has evolved a lot in the past century. After a long delay in adopting data protection laws when compared to other countries, Italy put up a steep pace and introduced a novelty in the law currently in force, d.lgs. 196/03: the principle of necessity. This provision, significantly located among the three "top principles" in data protection, imposes on data controllers a limitation on the use of personal data. This work slowly zooms in on the principle of necessity: after a survey of the various approaches to a privacy law in the international scene, with a major attention to the European context, the focus is centered on art. 3 of the Italian law, containing the principle of necessity, from a general explanation to theoretical literature on the subject and the application performed so far by the Guarantor. The conclusive analysis tries to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the provision by putting it in the perspective of its natural application field: a society where information, and even more the Internet, have dramatically changed the business models and favored the birth of new, opposing interests.

This open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy). The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape. The book's primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teachers can assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academics who are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects.

As we advance in information society, more and more of the wealth created consists of information. Personal data are an important subset of information and are rapidly becoming a premium commodity. Industry and government collect and use these data for purposes such as marketing, statistics and law enforcement. Many believe that personal information is well on its way to becoming one of the most valuable forms of information in our society. The advent of the global communications network raises treatment of personal information to a level of acute significance. Technology provides tools that allow processing of unprecedented masses of information; terabytes of digital data can be stored in hundreds of thousands of databases around the world.They can be replicated instantaneously in unlimited numbers and transmitted worldwide at the press of a button. One of the principal areas of concern is that technology has facilitated aggregation of personal data, i.e. data collected by one source for a certain purpose can be combined with data collected by a different source for a different purpose. All of these developments pose a serious risk to personal privacy. Protection of personal data has emerged as a cutting-edge issue in the new millennium. Most developed countries have passed comprehensive, often quite stringent, legislation to protect privacy of personal data. In the United States, however, no such legislation has been passed. The existing laws are limited to individual sectors of the economy. Consequently, some form of comprehensive legislation in the area of personal information is inevitable. This paper proposes a combined legal and technological solution to protect privacy in the context of increasing proliferation of personal information. By harnessing the technological capabilities which lie at the root of the problem, greater privacy protection is afforded to the individual, and the value of personal data is maximized for the benefit of both consumer and user.

Information society projects promise wealth and better services to those countries which digitise and encourage the consumer and citizen to participate. As paper recedes into the background and digital data becomes the primary resource in the information society, what does this mean for privacy? Can there be privacy when every communication made through ever-developing ubiquitous devices is recorded? Data protection legislation developed as a reply to large scale centralised databases which contained incorrect data and where data controllers denied access and refused to remedy information flaws. Some decades later the technical world is very different one, and whilst data protection remains important, the cries for more privacy-oriented regulation in commerce and eGov continue to rise. What factors should underpin the creation of new means of regulation? The papers in this collection have been drawn together to develop the positive and negative effects upon the information society which privacy regulation implies.