The Unaccountable State of Surveillance

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction – The Right of Access to Personal Data in a Changing European Legislative Framework

   • Xavier L’Hoiry, Clive Norris

   Pages 1-8

3. Methodological Remarks

   • Xavier L’Hoiry, Clive Norris

   Pages 9-20

4. A European Perspective on Data Protection and the Right of Access

   • Antonella Galetta, Paul de Hert

   Pages 21-43

5. Exercising Access Rights in Austria

   • Jaro Krieger-Lamina

   Pages 45-76

6. Exercising Access Rights in Belgium

   • Antonella Galetta, Paul de Hert

   Pages 77-108

7. Exercising Access Rights in Germany

   • Nils Zurawski

   Pages 109-133

8. Exercising Access Rights in Hungary

   • Ivan Szekely, Beatrix Vissy

   Pages 135-180

9. Exercising Access Rights in Italy

   • Chiara Fonio, Alessia Ceresa

   Pages 181-218

10. Exercising Access Rights in Luxembourg

    • Roger von Laufenberg

    Pages 219-255

11. Exercising Access Rights in Norway

    • Rocco Bellanova, Stine Bergersen, Maral Mirshahi, Marit Moe-Pryce, J. Peter Burgess

    Pages 257-296

12. Exercising Access Rights in Slovakia

    • Erik Láštic

    Pages 297-323

13. Exercising Access Rights in Spain

    • Gemma Galdon-Clavell

    Pages 325-358

14. Exercising Access Rights in the United Kingdom

    • Xavier L’Hoiry, Clive Norris

    Pages 359-404

15. Exercising Citizen Rights Under Surveillance Regimes in Europe – Meta-analysis of a Ten Country Study

    • Clive Norris, Xavier L’Hoiry

    Pages 405-455

16. Mapping the Legal and Administrative Frameworks of Informational Rights in Europe – A Cross-European Comparative Analysis

    • Antonella Galetta, Paul de Hert, Clive Norris, Xavier L’Hoiry

    Pages 457-478

17. Conclusion: The Law-in-Books, the Law-in-Action, and the Promise of Regulatory Reform

    • Clive Norris, Xavier L’Hoiry

    Pages 479-499

This book examines the ability of citizens across ten European countries to exercise their democratic rights to access their personal data. It presents a socio-legal research project, with the researchers acting as citizens, or data subjects, and using ethnographic data collection methods. The research presented here evidences a myriad of strategies and discourses employed by a range of public and private sector organizations as they obstruct and restrict citizens' attempts to exercise their informational rights. The book also provides an up-to-date legal analysis of legal frameworks across Europe concerning access rights and makes several policy recommendations in the area of informational rights. It provides a unique and unparalleled study of the law in action which uncovered the obstacles that citizens encounter if they try to find out what personal data public and private sector organisations collect and store about them, how they process it, and with whom they share it. These aresimple questions to ask, and the right to do so is enshrined in law, but getting answers to these questions was met by a raft of strategies which effectively denied citizens their rights. The book documents in rich ethnographic detail the manner in which these discourses of denial played out in the ten countries involved, and explores in depth the implications for policy and regulatory reform.

• ARCO rights (access, rectification, cancellation, and objection)
• Analysis of Exercising Access Rights
• Analyzing redress mechanisms
• Citizens’ personal information
• Comparative legal analyses
• Data controllers
• Data protection and privacy
• Disclosure activities
• Edward Snowden
• Ethnographic-based research methods
• European Directive on Data protection
• Exercising Access Rights
• Exercising subject access rights
• Informational Rights in Europe
• OECD’s guidelines
• Protection of personal data
• State and private agencies
• Surveillance practices
• Trans-border flows of personal data
• Unaccountable State of Surveillance

• Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

  Clive Norris, Xavier L'Hoiry

• Law, Science, Technology & Society, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

  Paul de Hert

• Studies of Law, LSTS Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

  Antonella Galetta

Policies and ethics