Jusletter IT

Information Law Revisited / Informationsrecht – noch einmal

  • Author: Ahti Saarenpää
  • Category: Articles
  • Region: Finland
  • Field of law: Legal Informatics, Information law
  • Collection: Conference Proceedings IRIS 2017
  • Citation: Ahti Saarenpää, Information Law Revisited / Informationsrecht – noch einmal, in: Jusletter IT 23 February 2017
It is no accident that the society we live in today is called the Network Society: indeed, we are very much prisoners of networks and the digital environment in which we live and work. In everything we do, we often use – and are expected to use – IT. This being the case, it is no surprise that digitalization has become a key concept in social policy in many countries. As such this is a development we should welcome. For too many years, we looked upon IT with wonder, suspicion and even aversion. But are we ready for the change we see unfolding in the many societies that have embarked on ambitious digitalization projects? Is what we see uncontrolled chaos, a muddle of assorted projects? And does the avoidance of information as one part of the economy of information still pose an obstacle to beneficial digitalization? Looking at these developments in legal perspective, I would go so far as to suspect that the answer to the last two questions is «yes». It has become all too obvious that we are not yet ready to tap the full potential of IT. My reservations are based on four salient, unfortunate considerations. First, the prevailing view is still essentially that IT is no more than a tool that should be available as easily and cheaply as possible. The old office automation mind-set makes it difficult to embrace a new way of thinking. Secondly, to an astounding extent we are still using and buying information systems designed to be more technically than legally robust. Thirdly, a significant proportion of the data processing we see today still consists of efforts to make manual activities digital. To cite an example – a telling one – the use of expert systems in data processing has been negligible at best. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation is meant to apply to more advanced processing of personal data. Lastly, I submit that we would do well to ask whether our conception of Information Law is sophisticated enough to meet the needs of the modern information culture. My presentation will mostly focus on the kinds of general doctrines of Information Law we have – or should have – in today’s Network Society, a society that is utterly reliant on information security, data protection and other important parts of the information culture.

Table of contents

  • 1. The legal toolbox and society
  • 2. Information Law: a jigsaw puzzle?
  • 3. Towards Information Law in the Network Society
  • 4. Conclusions
  • 5. Literature

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