Reinventing Data Protection?

Abstract

A large proportion of the scholarly work on privacy and data protection has focused attention on the instruments or tools that are, or that could be, used for regulating the processing and flow of personal data. This important research has generated considerable debate, criticism and (re)conceptualisation of the means whereby rights or claims to privacy can be defended or promoted. Much of the discourse around data protection has had to do with the merits or shortcomings of laws, directives, codes of practice, privacy statements and seals, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), contracts, binding corporate rules, international agreements and treaties and so on (e.g., Bennett and Raab, 2006).