Proposed here is a collaborative study of parallels and differences in the history and current form of privacy protection measures in nine countries. Over the last thirty years, virtually all of the world's liberal democracies have adopted privacy codes aimed at enabling ordinary citizens to exercise some control over creation, appropriation and use of data files on themselves by government and private organizations. In the project proposed here, nine privacy specialists will each develop a succinct overview of the evolution and distinctive character of such measures in his or her country. These chapter-length studies will be carefully coordinated and edited so as to address a core of questions vital to concerns about the intersections of science, technology and society. These questions include: What groups and interests in each country have mobilized for and against privacy protection codes? Has the impetus for such measures stemmed from dramatic public controversies (as in Watergate) or from some more incremental political developments? Where are key principles underlying each nation's privacy codes drawn from? Is there any evidence for influence of distinctively "Asian values" (or European or North American values) in the privacy codes of countries in these parts of the world? Have privacy laws and policies demonstrably altered the main flows of personal information in each country? Where have efforts to create privacy legislation or policy been blocked? Have privacy-enhancing technologies been deployed to any significant extent, and have they been successful? Information in response to these queries should provide a highly informative portrait of how the essentially global ideas of privacy protection are manifesting themselves in each country. It should also afford at least the beginnings of answers to more abstract, theoretically charged questions including the following: Are privacy policies around the world converging on a single set of principles, or do national differences promise to endure? Are countries that diverge from patterns prevailing in the U.S. today, for example, bound ultimately to succumb to pressures to emulate its policies in this connection? Have early and influential codes of privacy principles such as the OECD guidelines in fact withstood subjection to the rise of forceful demands for personal data associated with such trends as the war on terrorism and the rise of commercial markets for personal data? Creation and publication of these essays in book form is intended to make accessible and comprehensible to non-specialists a domain of inquiry and policy-making that has long been needlessly obscure. It should speak to the concerns of non-specialists everywhere who wonder whether and how privacy might be protected more fully, or in different ways, in their own countries. It should serve as a resource for public debate and policy-making in every country where privacy values are important. These include not only countries with well-developed privacy legislation like those covered in the case studies, but also the many countries likely to adopt privacy codes for the first time in the near future.
