This paper has been published as: Rasmus Helles and Stine Lomborg (2013) Regulatory response? Tracking the influence of technological developments on privacy regulation in Denmark from 2000 to 2011. Policy and Internet 5 (3) 289-303.
Stine Lomborg, University of Copenhagen
Rasmus Helles, University of Copenhagen
Introduction
This article presents an empirical study of the developments in the regulation of privacy in Denmark through the past decade, from 2000 to 2011. During this period, technologies for harvesting, storing and analysing logs of personal data, often compiled by digital systems in so-called ‘big data’ archives, have gradually become central resources in contemporary business intelligence.
Through an historical analysis of changes in the topics decided upon by the Danish Data Protection Agency, we offer an empirical grounding of the concept of privacy and its regulatory practice. We use Bordewijk and Kaam’s (1986) classification scheme of information flows as a conceptual model to examine which kinds of information flows give rise to regulatory consolidation and change, and identify practices of personal data processing that seem to escape regulatory action.
