Privacy and Security in the Digital Age

<p>Privacy and data protection are recognized as fundamental human rights. Recent developments however indicate that security issues are used to undermine these fundamental rights. As new technologies effectively facilitate collection storage processing and combination of personal data government agencies take advantage for their own purposes. Increasingly and for other reasons the business sector threatens the privacy of citizens as well. </p><p>The contributions to this book explore the different aspects of the relationship between technology and privacy. The emergence of new technologies threaten increasingly privacy and/or data protection; however little is known about the potential of these technologies that call for innovative and prospective analysis or even new conceptual frameworks.</p><p>Technology and privacy are two intertwined notions that must be jointly analyzed and faced. Technology is a social practice that embodies the capacity of societies to transform themselves by creating the possibility to generate and manipulate not only physical objects but also symbols cultural forms and social relations. In turn privacy describes a vital and complex aspect of these social relations. Thus technology influences people's understanding of privacy and people's understanding of privacy is a key factor in defining the direction of technological development.</p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research</i>.</p>