Technology's challenge to privacy (BBC) {incl. CHERTOFF'S speech at IDPPCC}

[eppur_se_muova]

Internet law professor Michael Geist wonders whether technology threatens the legal foundations of privacy law.

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The theme of this year's conference, held in Montreal, Canada, was "Terra Incognita," a reference to the unknown lands that typify the fear of the unknown in a world of rapidly changing technologies that challenge the core principles of privacy protection.
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Moreover, privacy law has also emphasised the distinction between personally identifiable information - information that can be traced to a particular person and is therefore deserving of legal protection - and non-identifiable information that does not enjoy any legal protection.

Technology threatens the ability to easily distinguish between the two as powerful computers and ever-expanding databases make it easier to identify individuals from what was once thought to be non-identifiable information.
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In the process, his vision of a broad surveillance society - supported by massive databases of biometric data collected from hundreds of millions of people - presented a chilling future.

Rather than terra incognita, Chertoff seemed to say there is a known reality about our future course and there is little that the privacy community can do about it.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7026641.stm