Rule on Surveillance : UCB SOC COLLOQUIUM TODAY

TODAY - MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH
BERKELEY SOCIOLOGY COLLOQUIUM SERIES

JAMES RULE
University of California, Berkeley
MASS SURVEILLANCE AND PRIVACY PROTECTION Evolution of a Public Issue

Monday, 8 February 2010, 2-3:30 p.m.
Blumer Room, 402 Barrows Hall

Nearly everyone notices--often with alarm--how easily information about one’s self can now be created, massaged, stored, analyzed, and shared among organizations. It’s not only that personal data circulate, often without our knowledge or authorization. They also come to serve purposes never imagined when they were created—shaping life-chances ranging from access to credit to scrutiny by anti-terrorist agencies. Over the last forty years, struggles regarding access and use of personal data have emerged to constitute a new public issue for legislation and policy.

During this period virtually all the world’s liberal democracies have adopted some form of privacy code, ostensibly directed at defending this endangered value. But a more analytical—that is, sociological—look at the forces and processes underlying these developments suggests that this public response may not be equal to the forces driving institutional demands for personal information. I will seek to explain why meaningful “privacy protection” has proven such an intractable issue, and how effective responses to this so-called “social problem” are feasible, but excruciating. En route, I will offer a few observations about the role of sociologists and sociological analysis in addressing highly-charged public issues.

James Rule is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.