Data protection legislation: What is at stake for our society and democracy?

The author starts by questioning the main privacy challenges raised by our present and future information society viewed as a “global village”. Apart from a comparison with the traditional village of our parents, he identifies the two complementary and not dissociable facets of our privacy: the right to seclusion and the right to participate fully in our society. According to the first German Constitutional Court recognizing the right to informational self-determination as a new constitutional right, he underlines the need to analyse the data protection as a tool for ensuring both the citizens' dignity and our democracy.The second part describes the three major changes of our technological environment: firstly, the tremendous and continuous growth of capacity of our information and communication systems; secondly, the Internet revolution with Web 2.0, the multiplication of digital identities and the convergence of all infrastructures and, finally, the ubiquitous computing. That evolution generates new privacy threats. In order to face correctly these new privacy risks, the author suggests the adaptation of our privacy legislation. Most notably, he proposes the adoption of certain principles available in environmental regulation, viz. the strong liability both of terminal equipment producers and of the infrastructure operators.The final chapter addresses three caveats to the data protection lawyers. Please, stop acting only like a lawyer. Open your mind. The information society needs a ‘Technology Assessment’ approach and better attention to the solution the technology itself might offer. Finally, the author underlines the absolute need to come back to the two keywords of the data protection legislation: transparency and proportionality and to take fully into consideration the way by which the technology might enhance the efficiency of those principles.