Confronting the Dragons Without and Within: Privacy's Final Frontier? A Report on 'Terra Incognita': The 29th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

Hundreds attended the 29th International Data Privacy Commissioners Conference in Montreal from September 25 to 28, 2007. Provocatively named “Terra Incognita”, the conference was thematically organized around early explorers’ dealings with “unknown lands”. Working from folklore that early explorers regularly marked drawings featuring uncharted territory with the phrase “here be dragons”,conference presentations were organized around six “dragons”: public safety, globalization, law meets technology, ubiquitous computing, the next generation and the body as data. Responses to these “dragons” were variously described as dragon slayers, dragon tamers and dragon befrienders. These included multi-sectoral and inter-jurisdictional collaboration, privacy seals, de-identification, audits, and privacy impact assessments (PIAs).Conference participants were reminded on a regular basis that we are only minutes from the midnight of the total surveillance society symbolized by the ACLU’s Surveillance Society Clock. Some members of the privacy community attributed the gravity of the current situation to the limited inroads that have been made in generating privacy-friendly policy and in capturing the hearts and minds of the public more generally. Reverberating throughout most sessions at the conference was the centrality of collaboration across sectors, stakeholder groups and territorial jurisdictions. Central projects identified for these collaborative initiatives included reconceptualizing the meaning of privacy, dismantling the privacy vs. security dichotomy, and addressing deficiencies in existing legal approaches, with a focus on the limited shelf-life of “consent”, “control” and “property” models currently in use.Part I highlights some of what we learned about the “dragons” at the conference, focusing on globalization (including the security agenda), technology (including data mining, RFID, location-based tracking, genetics and biobanking, ubiquitous computing, nanotechnology and standard setting), future generations and Internet crime. Part II approaches the proposed toolkits for “dragon slaying”, “befriending” or “taming” (including multi-sectoral, inter-jurisdictional collaboration, privacy seals, de- identification, audits and PIAs). Part III steps back from specific issues to focus on some of the broader themes recurring throughout the conference that raise important concerns for future thinking (including the meaning of privacy, the privacy vs. security dichotomy, and deficiencies in existing legal approaches).

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