Revisiting the Relationship between Privacy and Data Protection

This Element revisits the unsettled relationship between (information) privacy and data protection, exploring why it remains elusive, complex, and often misunderstood. It does so by integrating conceptual, regulatory, and legal analysis. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element revisits the unsettled relationship between (information) privacy and data protection, exploring why it remains elusive, complex, and often misunderstood. It does so by integrating conceptual, regulatory, and legal analysis. First, it identifies and discusses three conceptualisations of privacy in the literature, arguing that they should be understood complementarily rather than alternatively to provide a layered account of privacy. Second, it examines how each of these conceptualisations is reflected in the language and substance of key regional and international data protection frameworks. Third, it analyses their relationship through a legal lens, assessing the extent to which core data protection principles appear in human rights jurisprudence on the right to privacy. By bringing together these strands of analysis, it demonstrates that privacy and data protection overlap yet remain non-identical, and illustrates why their boundaries remain difficult to delineate. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.