Ronald Leenes

Nadezhda Purtova

Samantha Adams

The essays in this book clarify the technical, legal, ethical, and social aspects of the interaction between eHealth technologies and surveillance practices. The book starts out by presenting a theoretical framework on eHealth and surveillance, followed by an introduction to the various ideas on eHealth and surveillance explored in the subsequent chapters. Issues addressed in the chapters include privacy and data protection, social acceptance of eHealth, cost-effective and innovative healthcare, as well as the privacy aspects of employee wellness programs using eHealth, the use of mobile health app data by insurance companies, advertising industry and law enforcement, and the ethics of Big Data use in healthcare. A closing chapter draws on the previous content to explore the notion that people are ‘under observation’, bringing together two hitherto unrelated streams of scholarship interested in observation: eHealth and surveillance studies. In short, the book represents a first essential step towards cross-fertilization and offers new insights into the legal, ethical and social significance of being ‘under observation’.

Under Observation: The Interplay Between eHealth and Surveillance

Personal data, at least in the European legal lexicon, is not a conventional object of property rights. Yet, regardless of the actual legal circumstances, lively markets in personal data have become a reality. The so-called information industry routinely collects and deals in databases containing personal details of people as both citizens and consumers, and appears to regard this data as its property. Moreover, individuals also treat data pertaining to them as their own, and habitually disclose personal data in exchange for money, goods, services, and online social interaction. This important new book defends the ground-breaking proposal to propertise personal data. Propertisation arguably improves the position of a data subject to exercise control over his/her personal data by creating more effective tools of accountability and monitoring. It can also be used, the author shows, to enforce existing data protection rights as expressed in the EC Data Protection Directive (1995), Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1945) and Convention No. 108 (1981). This book inquires to what extent the propertisation of personal data is legally possible in Europe, and examines what benefits and limitations would ensue. It provides: a systematic understanding of the developments and concerns with regard to personal data; a detailed examination of the main arguments for and against the concept of property in personal data; and a European perspective on property rights in personal data. The result is a book full of original insights that breaks new ground in addressing the problems of personal data in the European law of data protection and informational privacy."

Nadezhda Purtova

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