Computers, Privacy & the Constitution

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MislavMataijaFirstPaper 5 - 06 May 2009 - Main.MislavMataija
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Assessing a Regulatory Approach to Data Protection: the EU Directive

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Doing too much and doing too little

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Some of its broadly applicable obligations may seem tough. But even if in some ideal world they were really effective in regulating business practices, they would also be able of imposing unnecessarily obstacles to harmless conduct and chilling free expression. Thus, in Lindqvist, the Directive was applied to a church volunteer who posted a list of people working for her parish on a website, along with phone numbers and some "mildly humorous" information on their jobs and hobbies. Under that standard, having a list of students and their e-mails available on a public wiki would definitely be suspect.
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Some of its broadly applicable obligations may seem tough. But even if in some ideal world they were really effective in regulating business practices, they would also be able of imposing unnecessary obstacles to harmless conduct and chilling free expression. Thus, in Lindqvist, the Directive was applied to a church volunteer who posted a list of people working for her parish on a website, along with phone numbers and some "mildly humorous" information on their jobs and hobbies. Under that standard, having a list of students and their e-mails available on a public wiki would definitely be suspect.
 Elevating privacy to the level of a fundamental right does not help either, because many other interests merit that lofty status in the case law of the European Court of Justice. A case in point is Telefonica, where a recording industry group demanded the names and addresses of a Spanish ISP's clients. The case was governed, said the Court, by three fundamental rights: right to property, right to an effective remedy, and the right to respect for private life. Which of these will win? The judgment does not really say - all we are left with is a hodge-podge of fundamental rights, from which national courts are supposed to derive a solution through "fair balancing". One can only imagine what the outcomes are in the 27 Member States.

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