Antonella Galetta

Exercising Access Rights in Belgium

This chapter outlines the experiences of attempting to exercise one’s right of access in Belgium. Using rich ethnographic examples, this chapter tests how easy or difficult it is for a data subject based in Belgium to obtain their personal data, firstly by locating the required information about organisations and their data controllers and secondly by submitting subject access requests to these organisations. The chapter reflects on the differences (if any) between public and private sector organisations in the process of responding to access requests as well as the role of the national Data Protection Authority in Belgium.

Mapping the Legal and Administrative Frameworks of Informational Rights in Europe – A Cross-European Comparative Analysis

This chapter reflects on the conclusions of the country-specific chapters and offers a detailed summary of the most noteworthy variances in national legislation across the ten European countries involved in the study. This comprehensive cross-European analysis examines key aspects of data protection legislation and specifically the right of access including the development of jurisprudence and case law in each country. The chapter draws attention to crucial delineations in the way that national legislation has interpreted Directive 95/46/EC and considers the impact of these differences upon data subjects’ ability to exercise their informational rights.

A European Perspective on Data Protection and the Right of Access

This chapter provides an up to date analysis of the legal and administrative frameworks surrounding informational rights at a supranational level in the European Union with a focus on the right of access to personal data. The first part of the chapter tracks the development of data protection and privacy legislation in the European Union, offering context and background to understand the journey of such regulation with a specific focus on the right of access. The second part of the chapter considers how issues of privacy and data protection have been dealt with by European courts, namely the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The chapter concludes by outlining the role played by the European Data Protection Supervisor.

New Surveillance, New Penology and New Resistance: Towards the Criminalisation of Resistance?

Surveillance is changing nowadays alongside new surveillance technologies and practices. ‘New’ surveillance is reframing the relationship between the ‘surveillant’ and the ‘surveilled’, while creating misconceptions about the way surveillance interacts with and impacts on society. Similarly, criminal surveillance is strongly influenced by these dynamics and paradigms of social deviance and dangerousness are subject to new tensions. This contribution illustrates the changes surveillance, crime, deviance and resistance are undergoing. Most of all, it shows that new surveillance has a huge impact on the ‘old’ categories of deviance and social dangerousness and tends to turn resistance into criminalisation. These considerations arise when looking at new, potential forms of surveillance that could be exercised using social media like Facebook.