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17 Info. & Comm. Tech. L. 1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/infctel17 and id is 1 raw text is: Information & Communications Technology Law Routledge Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2008, 1-2 orFrancsGroup EDITORIAL Privacy and the public/private divide Chris Ashford'* and Mark O'Brienb aDepartment of Law, University of Sunderland, UK; bSchool of Law, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK This is a free country, madam. We have a right to share your privacy in a public place. (Sir Peter Ustinov) This special edition of Information & Communications Technology Law draws upon the annual Information Technology Law & Cyberspace Stream of the Socio-Legal Studies Association held at Kent University in April 2007. Once again, the stream brought together a range of papers seeking to examine the challenges that the evolving information society presents for law and some of the problems law presents for our society in this sphere. This issue focuses upon the prevalent theme of the conference sessions - that of privacy and the public/private divide. Fenwick (2007: 73) has noted that the concept of 'private life' appears 'to encompass a widening range of protected interests' particularly with regard to what the state regards as the boundaries to private life. A casual observer of the British media can be in no doubt that the issue of privacy is one that has gained a prominent role in the United Kingdom's political debate, as it has in other countries. The ongoing ID cards and biometrics debate is one such example, whilst recent controversies surrounding the National Health Service (NHS) database is another, together with the loss of disks containing the personal details - including bank account information - of 25 million British citizens. Each debate and controversy has cast the State as an Orwellian Big Brother seeking ever greater amounts of data though, unlike Big Brother, commentators have bestowed the trait of incompetence to this. Bainbridge (2008: 635) has observed that within the information society, the individual's rights are very vulnerable. He comments that 'all manner of personal information is stored about us' on a variety of electronic systems. As the would-be NHS doctors caught in the NHS computer scandal discovered, much of that data can be sensitive and potentially hurtful or damaging if placed in the hands of unintended recipients. This special issue explores the scope of the 'public' and the 'private' as they relate to some of the opportunities for new types of communication that have resulted from the information revolution. In 'Blogging: A privacy perspective', Karen McCullagh explores privacy in the context of the 'blogging' phenomenon. She initially highlights one of the *Corresponding author. Email: chris.ashford@sunderland.ac.uk ISSN 1360-0834 print/ISSN 1469-8404 online 0 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13600830801886950 http://www.informaworld.com

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