Omer Tene writes:
Michael Birnhack, a professor at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, is one of the leading thinkers about privacy and data protection today (for some of his previous work see here and here and here; he’s also written a deep, thoughtful, innovative book in Hebrew about the theory of privacy. See here). In a new article, Reverse Engineering Informational Privacy Law, which is about to be published in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Birnhack sets out to unearth the technological underpinnings of the EU Data Protection Directive (DPD). The DPD, enacted in 1995 and currently undergoing a process of thorough review, is surely the most influential legal instrument concerning data privacy all over the world. It has been heralded by proponents as “technology neutral” – a recipe for longevity in a world marked by rapid technological change. Alas, Birnhack unveils the highly technology-specific fundamentals of the DPD, thereby putting into doubt its continued relevance.
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