Privacy and Human Rights

              This post is a summary of the article with the incomplete title above published in 2005 at  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242448871_Privacy_human_rights-an_international_survey_of_privacy_laws_and_developments/link/5a58d99e45851545026fc712/dow

                Privacy is a fundamental human rights recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in many other international and regional treaties. Privacy underpins human dignity and other values such as freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights issues of the modern age. Nearly every country in the world recognizes a right of privacy in their constitution. At a minimum, these provisions include rights of inviolability of the home and secrecy of communications. Most recently written constitutions such as South Africa's and Hungary's include specific right to access and control one's personal information. In many of the countries where privacy is not explicitly recognized in the constitution, such as the United States, Ireland and India, the courts have found that right in other provisions. In the early 1970s, countries began adopting broad laws intended to protect individual privacy. Throughout the world, their is a general movement towards adopting comprehensive privacy laws that set a framework for protection. Most of these laws are based on the models introduced by the OECD and the Council of Europe. The increasing sophistication of information technology with its capacity to collect, analize and disseminate information on individuals introduced a sense of urgency to the demand for privacy legislation. Furthermore, new developments in medical research and care, telecommunication and financial dramatically increased the level of information generated by each individual. According to opinion polls, concern over privacy violations is now greater than at any time in history. Uniformly, populations throughout the world express fears about encroachment on privacy, prompting an unprecedented number of nation to pass laws protecting the privacy of their citizens. It is now common wisdom that the power, capacity and speed of information technology is accelerating rapidly. The extent of privacy invasion, or certainly the potential to invade privacy, increases correspondingly. Beyond these obvious aspects of capacity and cost, there are a number of important trends that contribute to privacy invasion. 1) Globalization - removes geographical limitations to the flow of data. The development of the Internet is the best known example of a global technology. 2) Convergence- is leading to the elimination of technological barriers between systems 3) Multi-Media- fuses many forms of transmission and expression of data and images. The macro-trend outlined above had particular effect on surveillance. The transfer of surveillance tech from developed to developing nations is now a lucrative sideline for the arms industry. According to a 1997 report, "Assessing the Technologies of Political Control," commissioned by the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, much of this technology is used to track the activities of human rights activists, journalists, student leaders and political opponents. the report concludes that such technologies can exert a powerful `chilling effect` on those who might wish to take a dissenting view. In the absence of meaningful legal protections, such tech is inimical to democratic reform. Privacy has roots deep in history. The Bible has numerous references to privacy.  There was also substantive protection of privacy in early Hebrew culture, classical Greece and ancient China. Privacy protection is frequently seen as a way of drawing the line at how far society can intrude into a person's affairs. The Preamble to the Australian Privacy Charter provides, "a free and democratic society requires respect for the autonomy of individuals, and limits on the power of both state and private organizations to intrude on that autonomy." It also states, "Privacy is a key value which underpins human dignity..." Privacy can be defined as a fundamental human right. The law of privacy can be traced as far as 1361, when the English Justices of the Peace Act provided for the arrest of peeping toms and eavesdroppers. In 1792, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen declared that private property is inviolable and sacred. France prohibited the publication of private facts and set stiff fines for violators in 1858. Interest in the right of privacy increased in the 1970s with the advent of IT. The surveillance potential of computer systems prompted demands for specific rules governing the collection and handling of personal information. There are three major reasons for the movement towards comprehensive privacy and data protection laws. Many countries are adopting these laws for one or more of the following reasons: 1) To remedy past injustices - many countries, especially in Central Europe and South America, are adopting laws to remedy privacy violations that occurred under previous authoritarian regimes.  2) To promote electronic commerce - many countries are developing laws to promote electronic commerce. These countries recognize consumers are uneasy with their personal information being sent worldwide.  In the past three years, The European Union enacted two directives providing citizens with a wider range of protections over abuses of their data. Several principles of data protection are strengthened under the Directives. the key concept in the European model is "enforceability" The E.U. is concerned that data subjects have rights that are enshrined in explicit rules, and they can go to a person that can act on their behalf.