Principles of Privacy and Data Protection

IS489

Half/ Full unit

Half

Mr S Davies, room NAB 3.01

Dr G Hosein, room NAB 3.01

This course is optional for MSc Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems and MSc Public Management and Governance. We welcome other MSc students to follow the course, and previous students have come from Development, Government, Law, Management, Media and Communications, Social Policy and Sociology.

Privacy is one of today's more complex and pressing policy issues. The course provides a detailed overview of the key elements of privacy and its relationship with other human rights.

The purpose of the course is to draw the landscape for students to understand the challenges of policy development, implementation, and change in a complex environment involving issues like economic growth, national security, and technological innovation.

The content is international in nature, and discusses technological, social, legal, economic and political dimensions of contemporary policy issues including:

• information sharing and cross-border flows,
• data-mining,
• national security anti-terrorism policies,
• identification systems,
• internet policy and free expression,
• the protection of sensitive personal data,
• transformations in government ,
• the business case and challenges for business,

as well as some insight into international regulatory regimes.

We invite a number of international experts from academia, industry, government and civil society to give guest lectures.

Lent term

Lectures

10 x 2 hours

The course covers a wide spectrum of aspects of data protection, and will use the following texts:

• Leo Alexander, "Medical Science under dictatorship", The New England Journal of Medicine, July 1949, pp.39-47.

• Orin S. Kerr, "The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution", 102 Michigan Law Review 801-888 (2004)

• Stephen Margulis, "Privacy as a Social Issue and Behavioral Concept", Journal of Social Issues, Vol.59, No.2, 2003, pp.243-261

• Lew McCreary, "What was privacy?", Harvard Business Review, October 2008

• Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy", 4 Harvard. Law Review 193 (1890)

A number of journal articles and some court decisions from the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights

The course is assessed by a 5,000 word research essay.