LCIL Snyder Lecture 2011: Fred H. Cate - 'The Growing Importance (and Irrelevance) of International Data Protection Law'

Held in memory of Earl Snyder, the Snyder Lectures take place annually and are held at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and the University of Indiana's Bloomington School of Law on alternate years. Speakers are faculty members or prominent international law scholars or practitioners chosen by the universities to deliver the lectures, which are subsequently published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (IJGLS).Professor Fred H. Cate, Distinguished Professor and C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University delivered the 2011 Snyder Lecture on Monday 14th November 2011. Increasingly we live in a world of ubiquitous data and widely distributed power to collect, use, store, and share personal information. Data protection takes on new importance in an environment in which our activities, communications, transactions, and preferences are captured electronically and used to define our existence. Yet data protection laws, with their focus on transparency, consent, and regulatory oversight of every aspect of data processing are proving increasingly unworkable in the face of the deluge of digital data. The situation is exacerbated by the wide divergence among regional and national (and even local and provincial) laws used to regulate inherently global data flows. As reality and law grow further apart, individuals are left unprotected, industry and governments operate without meaningful oversight or certainty, and society lacks shared norms about the appropriate limits of data collection and use. This lecture addresses the scope of the problem and some practical steps for doing better.