London Economics has submitted a final report (4 M pdf) to the European Commission called, “Study on the economic benefits of privacy‐enhancing technologies.”

LE focused on 12 European countries: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, and the United Kingdom. From the Executive Summary:

The  European  Commission  DG  Justice,  Freedom  and  Security  commissioned  London  Economics  to undertake  a  study  on  the  economics  benefits  of  Privacy  Enhancing  Technologies  (PETs)  for organisations  and  institutions  using  and  holding  using  personal  data,  the  data  controllers.

A particular focus of the study is the situation with regards to SMEs. Further specific issues examined by the study include:

• whether/ how the impact of PETs can be measured; and
• whether  cooperation/joint  action  such  as  Public  Private  Partnerships  of  data  controllers with  national  authorities  or  international  organisations  would  enhance  economic benefits. [...]

PETs: definition and technical overview
PETs  is  a  complex  concept  that  comprises  a  broad  range  of  individual  technologies  at different levels of maturity. PETs are constantly evolving, often in response to ever more advanced threats.

Data  security  technologies  are  PETs  if  they  are  used  to  enhance  privacy.  But,  it  should  be  noted  that  they  can  be  used  in  inherently  privacy‐invasive  application,  in  which  case  they  cannot properly be counted as PETs.

Data  minimisation  and  consent  mechanism  are  an  important  part of  PETs.  Many  PETs  combine various  technologies,  including  data  protection  tools  (e.g.,  encryption)  and  ‘pure’  PETs  (e.g.,  data minimisation tools) to form integrated PET systems of varying complexity.

A  variety  of  different  classifications  of  PETs  has  been  proposed,  primarily  based  on  technological  characteristics.  A  classification  according  to  economic  characteristics  remains  elusive  and  may be impossible because of the context-specific nature of the economic effect of PETs.

In  interactions  with  data  controllers  and  other  stakeholders,  the  complexity  of  the  PETs  concept  might  act  as  a  barrier  to  understanding  the  nature  of  the  technologies  and  their  usefulness.  The  use  of  more  specific  terminology  (e.g.,  ‘data  protection  tools’,  ‘data  minimisation  tools’, ‘consent mechanisms’, etc.) might be preferable in many cases.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 and is filed under Anonymity, Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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