Societies constantly change and so do individual and societal needs. Legal frameworks and basic rights guide and limit societal behaviour and at the same time adjust themselves in response to new and shifting needs.
In times of permanent and rapid change we must ask whether the legal framework still meets societal needs and society's value basis. The widespread use of information- and communication technologies is one of the most important technological innovations influencing societies all over the world. Digitalisation, miniaturisation and networking are keywords of this development. Internet, e-commerce, mobile communication, smart card applications, biometrics, smart homes, and ubiquitous computing are generating huge amounts of data. The more activities in daily life are supported by electronic means the more data traces we leave behind. Virtual pictures of real persons may gain a life of themselves. Misuse of personal data, widespread surveillance and commercial interests increasingly give rise to new challenges for privacy. ICT constitute a permanent, more comprehensive and often unnoticeable threat to our privacy. On the other hand millions of people voluntarily create personal websites to present themselves to the whole community, many of them using webcams, and thousands try to participate in talk shows and reality TV broadcasts, where they often disclose intimacies to a broad audience.
These ambivalent societal developments, combined with technological progress, lead to the guiding question of this conference:
Is privacy a fundamental right with an expiry date?
In order to discuss recent developments in an interdisciplinary way the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences organised an international conference on this issue. High level experts discussed topics like the philosophy of privacy, psychological and societal foundations, the history of basic rights, international right and policy, technical challenges and support for privacy as well as user requirements and attitudes.
Im vorliegenden Buch werden die Beiträge der vom ITA veranstalteten Konferenz „Privacy – Ein Grundrecht mit Ablaufdatum?“ vom 11.11.2002 in Wien dokumentiert. Die Konferenz bot WissenschafterInnen aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen sowie Praktikern aus Politik und Zivilgesellschaft ein Forum zum Dialog. Die vorliegenden Beiträge ausgewiesener ExpertInnen beleuchten das Grundrecht auf Privatsphäre dem entsprechend aus völlig unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln. Ausgehend von der philosophischen Betrachtung der Privatheit und ihres Wertes für liberale Gesellschaften spannt sich der Bogen über eine Entwicklungsgeschichte der Grundrechte zur Diskussion der Persönlichkeitsrechte als Wirtschaftsgut. Die internationale Perspektive wird in einem Politikvergleich unter dem Titel Global Assumptions and International Governance eingebracht. Darüber hinaus finden sich in diesem Band soziologische Analysen zur Überwachung, Vorschläge wie Datenschutz durch Technik gewährleistet werden könnte und ein Beitrag zu Datenschutz als Verbraucherschutz. Abschließend wird auf aktuelle Entwicklungen in Österreich eingegangen.
This book is based on contributions to an international conference held in Vienna on November 11th 2002. The conference entitled "Privacy – a basic right with expiring date?" was a forum for an interdisciplinary dialog of experts from academia as well as politicians and representatives from civilian society. The papers in this book argue that privacy is an indispensable value in liberal societies, present an overview on the development of basic rights from the past to the present and discuss the impact of personal rights seen as economic goods. Global assumptions and international governance of information privacy are discussed in another paper. A further paper deals with the surveillance and sociological implications of sorting and integrating personal data. Technical approaches are available to overcome some of the problems mentioned above, which are presented in a co