Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the politics of privacy protection with regard to personal information. It elaborates and critiques the prevailing paradigm for understanding, promoting and protecting the privacy of personal information. The book considers the much-neglected relationship between privacy and social equity; the individualist assumptions behind the privacy paradigm have tended to overshadow the question of the distribution of privacy protection in modern societies. It considers the transnational instruments that have originated from a number of prominent international organizations. The book analyzes the phenomenon of self-regulation which continues to play an important role within the policy sector, and is regarded by many as the way forward for privacy protection in the global 'information age'. It evaluates the policy instruments and their interrelationships as mutually supportive or conflicting components in privacy protection systems.