TECHNOLOGY + PRIVACY | 28 JANUARY 2010 :: HAPPY INTERNATIONAL DATA PRIVACY DAY EVERYONE

Today is Data Privacy Day.

In “celebration” of the day, I’m publishing an academic paper on designKULTUR about privacy policy in the digital era:

“Big Blue, the Holocaust, and the EU Model: How Europe Led the Way on Privacy Protection Policy.”

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ABSTRACT

The digital era has increased the pace with which governments have attempted to regulate the privacy of their “data subjects.”

The “EU Model,” with its civil rights approach to privacy, has emerged as the “gold standard” of privacy protection policy.

This paper examines the reasons why the European Union has been at the forefront of codifying privacy policy into legislation. Of interest are differing concepts of citizenship in the United States and the EU.

After a brief discussion on the meaning of privacy, the paper explores the social, political, and legal contexts in which privacy protection policy evolved in these two paradigms. Of particular note is the Nazi era as a defining moment in the history of Europe, and Europeans’ wish not to repeat the past.

Before and during the Second World War, International Business Machines played a pivotal role in maximizing Hitler’s war machine. IBM Hollerith machines enabled the Third Reich to attempt to create a society based on surveillance, classification, social selection, and sorting. Thus, the EU Model has, in its shadows, a link to a little known or forgotten piece of history with a nexus to the dawn of the Information Age.