This book identifies and explains the different national approaches to data protection ¿ the
legal regulation of the collection storage transmission and use of information concerning
identified or identifiable individuals ¿ and determines the extent to which they could be
harmonised in the foreseeable future. In recent years data protection has become a major
concern in many countries as well as at supranational and international levels. In fact the
emergence of computing technologies that allow lower-cost processing of increasing amounts of
information associated with the advent and exponential use of the Internet and other
communication networks and the widespread liberalization of the trans-border flow of
information have enabled the large-scale collection and processing of personal data not only
for scientific or commercial uses but also for political uses. A growing number of
governmental and private organizations now possess and use data processing in order to
determine predict and influence individual behavior in all fields of human activity. This
inevitably entails new risks from the perspective of individual privacy but also other
fundamental rights such as the right not to be discriminated against fair competition between
commercial enterprises and the proper functioning of democratic institutions. These phenomena
have not been ignored from a legal point of view: at the national supranational and
international levels an increasing number of regulatory instruments ¿ including the European
Union¿s General Data Protection Regulation applicable as of 25 May 2018 ¿ have been adopted
with the purpose of preventing personal data misuse. Nevertheless distinct national approaches
still prevail in this domain notably those that separate the comprehensive and detailed
protective rules adopted in Europe since the 1995 Directive on the processing of personal data
from the more fragmented and liberal attitude of American courts and legislators in this
respect. In a globalized world in which personal data can instantly circulate and be used
simultaneously in communications networks that are ubiquitous by nature these different
national and regional approaches are a major source of legal conflict.
