Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Preliminary Material / Dennis Campbell and Joy Fisher -- Preface / Editor: Joy Fisher -- The Authors / Dennis Campbell and Joy Fisher -- Austria / Rudolf Krilyszyn and Peter Josef Schober -- Belgium / Peter L’Ecluse -- Canada / Amy-Lynne Porter Williams , Robert Wilkes , and Michael Erdle -- Denmark / Eivind Einersen and Eric Korre Horten -- England / John R. C. Clitheroe and Jane Ivinson -- The Council of Europe and the European Community / Herald D.J. Jongen and Gerrit A. Vriezen -- Finland / Jorma Kuopus -- France / Gérard Kling -- Germany / Joachim Schrey and Joachim Feldges -- Greece / Dimitri M. Georgopoulos -- Hong Kong / Sarah Vickers and Tom Hope -- Italy / Alessandro P. Giorgetti and Sandro Raimondi -- Luxembourg / Guy Harles -- The Netherlands / M. J. Geus -- New Zealand / Celia M. Caughey and Sally Fitzgerald -- Norway / Jon Bing -- Portugal / Helena Tapp Barroso -- Spain / Isabel Hernando -- Switzerland / Markus Hünig -- United States / Michael D. Scott.

More than 100 years ago, long before the concept of `data' in its contemporary sense was conceived of, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville postulated that `if the private rights of an individual are violated ... the manners of a nation' are corrupted, jeopardizing the entire society. With the advent of computerized data processing, the threats to personal privacy have multiplied in a manner undreamed of in de Tocqueville's day, and the state of technology continues to be refined at a pace far in advance of the necessarily deliberative pace of the laws passed in an attempt to deal with the problem. This provides a snapshot in time of the contemporary state of some of these attempts in seventeen representative countries, mostly in Europe, but also in North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Their stories are framed in the context of an introductory chapter on the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, and Draft Directives in the field of data protection published by the European Community Commission.

English

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