Introduction to Privacy Impact Assessment

If privacy is a cornerstone of democracy,1 then democracy is in trouble. Especially since the advent of the computer, the encroachments on privacy have proliferated. Terrorist attacks in the early 21st century have given governments all the justifications they need to bolster national security by forcing telecom companies to retain telephone records, to justify warrantless eavesdropping on our phone calls, to examine our bank records, to fuse personally identifiable information from multiple sources, to profile citizens to determine who presents a risk to the established order. Many companies have either aided and abetted governmental efforts or engaged in their own surreptitious amassing of the details of our lives. Personal data in real time has become the fuel of today's economy.