Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Joel Reidenberg’s article detailing the dubious legality of safe harbors

Also see:
The blog entry on safe harbour: http://essexdataprotection.blogspot.com/2006/03/safe-harbor-studies.html
The report of the European Commission that Joel, I and some colleagues wrote – safe harbors in action:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/doc/library/ext_studies/privacy_trust_policies/final_report_29_02_08.pdf

4 March 1-2 pm Dr Ian Brown Guest Seminar- data protection current issues in the UK

Day: Tuesday
Date: 04-03-2008 (Week 23)
Time: 13:00 to 14:00
Room: LTB B (35) (AV) (PRS)

Dr Ian Brown is a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, and an honorary senior lecturer at University College London. His work is focused on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy, copyright and e-democracy. He also works in the more technical fields of information security, networking and healthcare informatics.

Dr Brown is co-Principal Investigator of the Fair Tracing and e-Curator projects, and teaches courses on Information and Society and Information Systems. He is a member of the VOTES project ethics committee and has advised the PRISD, SWAMI, PRISE and PRIME projects. Previously he worked on the PIMMS, CPOSS and CLEF projects and ran the Cambridge-MIT Institute’s Critical Infrastructure Protection working group.

Since 1998 Dr Brown has variously been a director of Privacy International, the Open Rights Group and the Foundation for Information Policy Research and an adviser to Greenpeace and Creative Commons UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the British Computer Society, a senior member of the ACM, and has consulted for the US Department of Homeland Security, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Allianz, McAfee, the BBC, the European Commission and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.

Dr Brown’s work has been covered by the BBC, CNN, CBC and numerous newspapers and magazines. In 2004 he was voted as one of the 100 most influential people in the development of the Internet in the UK over the previous decade.

Blog: http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/

Week 1 LW656 2008

This week, Iread Google’s privacy policy as a way to familiarise yourselves with data protection policy.

Also read Ian Lloyd, IT Law (3rd Edn 2000 4th Edn 2005) Chapter 3 for background, Chapter 4 for next week’s lecture. You will find many copies in the library and either edition is adequate for background.

You should also read a concise explanation of the rise of privacy laws, Colin Bennett (2002) Information Policy and Information Privacy: International Arenas of Governance


Background reading that may be useful is:
Bennett and Raab (2006) MIT Press, The Governance of Privacy, for the policy background.


There is also a useful collection of readings available:
(2001)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2001_2/warren
(2007) http://essexdataprotection.blogspot.com/

Week 2 seminar focus is the development of privacy law up to the Data Protection Directive 1995.

Data Protection Act implenting EC/95/46

Please read Chap 3 of Lloyd (if you haven’t already) and ESPECIALLY Chaps 4-5.

Note that there are lots of copies of Lloyd in the library – in both the regular and special collections. Let me know BEFORE the seminar of you have problems.

Also note that Part IV of the law relates to exceptions to the legislation:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980029_en_5#pt4

Do you agree that the scope of the exceptions is too wide? We will answer this question in class.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Phorm and the RIP Act - tracing users' data

See the latest coverage including legal opinions on the new adware application that's causing controversy.