The legal significance of individual choices about privacy and personal data protection 1

• Published in: Surveillance, Privacy and Security Vol. 1; pp. 177 - 190
• Main Authors: Fuster, Gloria González, Gutwirth, Serge
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2017
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Data Processing Practices; Packet Filtering; Isle Of Man; Strasbourg Court; ECtHR’s Case Law; Hofstede’s National Cultural Dimensions; Data Subjects; Online Privacy Concerns; Vice Versa; DNA Database; Perceived Privacy Risks; Data Protection Impact Assessments; Personal Data Protection; Data Processing Operation; Data Protection; EU Charter; High Privacy Concern; Uncertainty Avoidance; Personal Data Processing Activities; Personal Data Processing; Personal Data; General Data Protection Regulation; Male Homosexual Acts; Violated
• ISBN: 1138649244; 9781138649248
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315619309-11

Policy makers in the European Union (EU) taking security-related decisions are obliged to ensure all adopted measures are compliant with fundamental rights requirements. This chapter investigates how legal compliance, as determined by judges and courts, proceeds to take into account individual choices referring to privacy and personal data protection in relation to security. It is concerned with how legal decisions are taken using or ignoring individual choices related to privacy and personal data protection. The chapter explores how positive law sometimes appears to integrate the consideration of individual choices. The principles guiding the relation between fundamental rights and individual choices are examined. This is followed by a study of the significance of individual choices for the adjudication of the right to respect for private life, and for the adjudication and regulation of the right to personal data protection. Finally, some of the key tensions of the integration of individual choices in EU personal data protection law are discussed.