Accountable surveillance practices: Is the EU moving in the right direction?

Abstract

The European Union is introducing into the Data Protection Package a new data protection principle, the principle of accountability. Data controllers will be compelled to adopt policies, organizational and technical measures to ensure and be able to demonstrate compliance with the legal framework. The expected benefits are threefold: to foster trust in personal data management practices of data controllers, to increase visibility of personal data processing activities and to raise data controllers' privacy awareness. Surveillance practices, because of their inherent opacity, could greatly benefit from reinforced accountability obligations to gain public's trust. This paper critically analyses whether the policy options taken by the European Union to operationalise the principle of accountability are likely to meet this goal. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.