Welcome. I have written other blogs in the past especially on Internet Governance, but this brand new blog has been created to provide a forum for information and exchanges of ideas about privacy and, especially, its many links to the development of personality of each individual on the planet. In this way I would like to share interesting ideas and information that are gleaned from the many projects I am involved in or have recently completed. Most of these projects deal with one or more aspects of privacy.  The next paragraphs give you a flavour of some of these projects. Each of the projects has its own web-site with more information so feel free to follow the links to those web-pages.

CONSENT dealt with Privacy and consent in user-generated content and social networking. SMART — dealt with smart surveillance and also included a brief from the European Commission to produce a pan-European draft law as required under CFD/977/JHA/2008 and the draft  directive of 25.01.2012 regulating automated collection of personal data for law enforcement purposes.  RESPECT also focused on surveillance — with a special focus on surveillance in cyberspace, CTF — Counter-terrorism Finance, social networking and RFID. MAPPING deals with internet governance, privacy and intellectual property. INGRESS – has us working on creating privacy-by-design templates for Innovative Technology for Fingerprint Live Scanners while SiiP also takes our teams’ work on privacy-by-design and extends it to voice-recognition and speaker-identification. e-crime requires us to investigate privacy and other legal aspects of electronic crime, whereas in the  EVIDENCE project amongst other things we look at the data protection issues in digital evidence.  More recently, CARISMAND also explores the privacy dimension in – Culture And RISkmanagement in Man-Made And Natural Disasters  — while CITYCoP has a significant focus on privacy within smartphone apps designed to enhance community policing across Europe. Our newest project ESSENTIALS is intended to award joint PhDs in Information Policy, Security Science and Law with the aim of establishing the theoretical basis for security science.

One of the most important projects I have recently added to my portfolio is certainly that of the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Privacy (SRP) so readers can also certainly expect to find me posting news and impressions as well as discussions related to my mandate from the Human Rights Council.

A forum? Certainly. I don’t wish this blog to be one-way traffic. One of the intentions is to provide an additional, structured, interactive space where anybody and everybody can weigh in with their concerns and ideas about anything which is connected to privacy. It will be a moderated space where freedom of expression is tempered only by a respectful approach to dignity, reputation and privacy. The moderation will be carried out by a team of more than five colleagues who will be helping me run and maintain the site. Guest posts linked to the theme of personality and privacy are welcomed. Just write to me about it with your ideas. I hope you’ll enjoy it.