Privacy in the Information SocietyEdition 1

Information society projects promise wealth and better services to those countries which digitise and encourage the consumer and citizen to participate. As paper recedes into the background and digital data becomes the primary resource in the information society, what does this mean for privacy? Can there be privacy when every communication made through ever-developing ubiquitous devices is recorded? Data protection legislation developed as a reply to large scale centralised databases which contained incorrect data and where data controllers denied access and refused to remedy information flaws. Some decades later the technical world is very different one, and whilst data protection remains important, the cries for more privacy-oriented regulation in commerce and eGov continue to rise. What factors should underpin the creation of new means of regulation? The papers in this collection have been drawn together to develop the positive and negative effects upon the information society which privacy regulation implies.