Snyder Lecture 11: 'The Growing Importance (and Irrelevance) of International Data Protection Law' by Professor Fred H. Cate

Professor Fred H. Cate
Distinguished Professor/C Ben Dutton Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University

A video of this lecture is available on the University Streaming Media Service.

Abstract

Fred H. Cate is a Distinguished Professor and C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. He directs Indiana University’s Center for Law, Ethics, and Applied Research in Health Information and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (a National Center of Academic Excellence in both Information Assurance Research and Information Assurance Education). Professor Cate is a member of privacy and security advisory boards for Microsoft, Intel, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He serves as the Privacy Editor for the IEEE’s Security & Privacy and is one of the founding editors of the OUP journal, International Data Privacy Law. A regular witness before congressional committees and speaker at international data protection and privacy conferences, Professor Cate is the author of more than 100 articles and books and appears in the three most recent Computerworld listings of the world’s “Best Privacy Advisers”.

Lecture summary: 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.