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James Rule, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Abstract:

It doesn't take a specialist to notice that any normal life in today's world generates a steady stream of recorded information on one's self. We are all constantly emanating data, from occasions ranging from credit card transactions to airline screenings to supermarket visits. We can also hardly miss the fact that such data, once created, take on a life of their own, as they are stored, transmitted, massaged, sold, and used as bases for determining how we will be treated.

Creating and managing these sophisticated uses of personal information are resourceful bureaucracies, both state agencies and corporations. The resulting systems of decision-making orchestrate allocation of the widest array of things, from credit, insurance and social welfare benefits to the pursuit of criminals and terrorists.
The evident loss of control over one's "own" data to state and private organizations has for a generation provoked anxieties over the fate of privacy and autonomy. As a result, nearly all of the world's prosperous democracies have created institutions and policies officially aimed at "privacy protection". Yet the steady accretion and use of personal data have not much abated.

My remarks will review the social processes underlying these developments and point to questions that, I hope, hold interest beyond our specialties. Is it reasonable to seek meaningful limits on institutions accumulation and use of data on ourselves? And if so, what principle or strategy could one put forward to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable uses of personal data?

Biography:

James B. Rule has devoted a substantial portion of his career to the study of privacy and surveillance. He is a Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

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