Privacy Law (LAW545H1S)

The protection of privacy is increasingly seen to be of central importance to the emerging global information society. At the same time, it faces many threats from new technologies and the contexts in which these are used. This course will survey many of the most influential theories of privacy and ask whether they are sufficiently sensitive to both emerging technological challenges to privacy as well as different cultural understandings of privacy. This course will then use these critical resources to examine different legal models for protecting privacy, both in the private and public sector, including common law, sector-specific legislation, comprehensive legislation, and constitutional protection. Examples will be drawn from a variety of common law jurisdictions and will focus on a number of emerging practices that have serious privacy implications including the use of: subscriber information from telecommunication service providers, DNA databanks, biometrics, profiling techniques, and public video cameras.