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Impact Assessments as Negotiated Knowledge

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Reforming European Data Protection Law

Part of the book series: Law, Governance and Technology Series ((ISDP,volume 20))

Abstract

The existing literature on privacy impact assessments (PIA) considers such instruments as tools to produce knowledge and as part of risk management. This article wants to reconsider impact assessments as political tools, in which knowledge production can not be separated from negotiations between interests.

First impact assessments are situated in the account of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society. Beck points to the decentralization of political decision making and the development of subpolitics. Impact assessments are an example of a tool to democratize subpolitics. Secondly the typology of environmental impact assessments from Cashmore is introduced to consider how the purpose given to impact assessments, varying from informing over influencing decision making to co-decision making, is related with the role given to knowledge and to stakeholder involvement. Which knowledge is relevant is shown to be negotiated in an interest-driven context.

The last part shows that awareness of the political nature of impact assessments also helps to approach the problem of integrating various disciplines. The relation between different disciplines in an impact assessment is not fixed. An impact assessment is a political process and has its own mechanism of closure defining what is a relevant impact and relevant knowledge about them.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See for the different approaches: Schot, Johan und Arie Rip 1997, The Past and Future of Constructive Technology Assessment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 54 (2–3): pp. 251–268. Guston, David H. und Daniel Sarewitz 2002, Real-time technology assessment. Technology in Society 24: pp. 93–109 and Vanclay, Frank, “International principles for social impact assessment”, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, Vol. 21, No. 5, 2003, pp. 5–11.

  2. 2.

    For an overview on different assessment approaches see: Barbara Prainsack, Lars Ostermeier, Report on methodologies relevant to the assessment of societal impacts of security research, D 1.2 Assert-project, http://assert-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ASSERT_D1.2_KCL_final.pdf.

  3. 3.

    David Wright and Paul De Hert (eds), Privacy Impact Assessment, (Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer), 2012; Wright, David, and Charles D. Raab, “Constructing a surveillance impact assessment”, Computer Law & Security Review 28 (2012): 613–626. Wright, David, and Kush Wadhwa, A step-by-step guide to privacy impact assessment. Empirical research on contextual factors affecting the introduction of PIA frameworks in EU Member States, Poland, April 2012. Available at: http://www.piafproject.eu/ref/A_step-by-step_guide.pdf.

  4. 4.

    Ulrich Beck, Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity. Translated by Marc Ritter, London, Newbury Park, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992.

  5. 5.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 19–20.

  6. 6.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 156.

  7. 7.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 175.

  8. 8.

    See: Macnaghten, Phil, Matthew B. Kearnes and Brian Wynne, Nanotechnology, Governance, and Public Deliberation: What Role for the Social Sciences? Science Communication 27 (2005): pp. 268–291. Williams, Robin 2006, Compressed Foresight and Narrative Bias: Pitfalls in Assessing High Technology Futures. Science as Culture 15 (2006): pp. 327–348.

  9. 9.

    Boris Holzer and Mats P. Sorensen talk of “the passive and the active side of subpolitics as well as their possible interaction” to demonstrate the spectrum as whole. See: Holzer, B. and M. P. Sorensen: Rethinking Subpolitics. Beyond the ‘Iron Cage’ of Modern Politics? Theory, Culture & Society April 2003 vol. 20 no. 2 79–102.

  10. 10.

    Thomas Mathiesen, Lex Vigilatoria – Towards a control system without a state?, in: Deflem, Mathew (ed.) Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, Bingley, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 101–130.

  11. 11.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 212.

  12. 12.

    See: Alonso, Sonia et al., The Future of Representative Democracy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011); Michaelsen, Danny, Franz Walter, Unpolitische Demokratie. Zur Krise der Repräsentation, (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013), especially pp. 179 on the process of de-parliamentization of politics and deliberative surrogate-democracy since the 1970s.

  13. 13.

    Prainsack and Ostermeier, Report on methodologies relevant to the assessment of societal impacts of security research, p. 20.

  14. 14.

    See for EIA the Directive 2011/92/EU of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment; for DPIA/PIA see article 33, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation), COM/2012/011 final – 2012/0011 (COD).

  15. 15.

    David Wright, The state of the art in privacy impact assessment, 2012 Computer Law & Security Review 28 (2012), p. 55.

  16. 16.

    Spiekermann, Sarah, The RFID PIA – developed by industry, agreed by regulators, in: David Wright and Paul De Hert (eds), Privacy Impact Assessment, (Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer, 2012), pp. 323–346.

  17. 17.

    Wright, David, and Paul De Hert, “Introduction to Privacy Impact Assessment”, in: David Wright and Paul De Hert (eds), Privacy Impact Assessment, (Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer, 2012), p. 7

  18. 18.

    Wright, David, and Kush Wadhwa, A step-by-step guide to privacy impact assessment. Empirical research on contextual factors affecting the introduction of PIA frameworks in EU Member States, Poland, April 2012. Available at: http://www.piafproject.eu/ref/A_step-by-step_guide.pdf.

  19. 19.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 176.

  20. 20.

    Wynne, Brian, Risk as globalizing ‘democratic’ discourse? Framing subjects and citizens, in: Science and Citizens: Globalization and the Challenge of Engagement, Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Brian Wynne (eds.) (London: Zed Books, 2005), p. 70.

  21. 21.

    Wynne, Brian, Risk and Environment as Legitimatory Discourses of Technology: Reflexivity Inside Out?, Current sociology, 2002, 50, p. 468.

  22. 22.

    Wynne, Brian, Risk as globalizing ‘democratic’ discourse? Framing subjects and citizens, p. 72.

  23. 23.

    Bennett, Colin J., and Charles D. Raab, The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 188.

  24. 24.

    Jasanoff, Sheila, States of knowledge. The co-production of science and social order. (London: Sage, 2004).

  25. 25.

    Cashmore, Matthew, “The role of science in environmental impact assessment: process and procedures versus purpose in the development of theory.” Environmental Impact Assessment Review 24 (2004): pp. 405–414.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., pp. 408–409.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 410.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 410.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 411.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 412.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 412.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 413.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 412–413.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 413.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 414.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., p. 417.

  37. 37.

    Partidario, Maria Rosario and William R. Sheate, “Knowledge brokerage – potential for increased capacities and shared power in impact assessment”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 39 (2013): p. 27.

  38. 38.

    Cashmore, Matthew, “The role of science in environmental impact assessment: process and procedures versus purpose in the development of theory.”, pp. 418–420.

  39. 39.

    Runhaar, Hens, and Piety Runhaar and Tammo Oegema, “Food for thought: Conditions for discourse reflection in the light of environmental assessment”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 30 (2010): pp. 339–346; Partidario, Maria Rosario and William R. Sheate, “Knowledge brokerage – potential for increased capacities and shared power in impact assessment”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 39 (2013): 26–36; Juntti, Meri, and Duncan Russel, John Turnpenny, “Evidence, politics and power in public policy for the environment”, Environmental Science & Policy 12 (2009): pp. 207–215; Cashmore, Matthew et al., “Evaluating the effectiveness of impact assessment instruments: Theorising the nature and implications of their political constitution”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 30 (2010): pp. 371–379.

  40. 40.

    Runhaar, Hens, and Piety Runhaar and Tammo Oegema, “Food for thought: Conditions for discourse reflection in the light of environmental assessment”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 30 (2010): p. 340.

  41. 41.

    Kuhn, Thomas, The structure of scientific revolutions. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 149.

  42. 42.

    Runhaar, Hens, and Piety Runhaar and Tammo Oegema, “Food for thought: Conditions for discourse reflection in the light of environmental assessment”, pp. 344–345.

  43. 43.

    Partidario, Maria Rosario and William R. Sheate, “Knowledge brokerage – potential for increased capacities and shared power in impact assessment”, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 39 (2013): 26–36.

  44. 44.

    For an account see: Hempel, Leon and Lars Ostermeier, Tobias Schaaf, DagnyVedder, Towards a Social Impact Assessment of Security Technologies. A bottom-up approach. Science and Public Policy (2013) 40 (6): pp. 740–754.

  45. 45.

    This approach was used in WP4 and 8 of the SIAM-project. See D 4.7 and D 8.2., see: http://www.siam-project.eu

  46. 46.

    On the specific role of sociology in relation to law, see: Luhmann, Niklas, Ausdifferenzierung des Rechts. Beiträge zur Rechtssoziologie und Rechtstheorie. (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1999), p. 259. See also Luhmann, Niklas, Law as a social System, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), p. 85.

  47. 47.

    Luhmann, Niklas, Law as a social System, pp. 113–117.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Technology and Society (CTS), Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Leon Hempel

  2. Law Science Technology & Society (LSTS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Hans Lammerant

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  1. Leon Hempel
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Correspondence to Hans Lammerant .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS), Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Serge Gutwirth

  2. Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Ronald Leenes

  3. Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS), Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Paul de Hert

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Hempel, L., Lammerant, H. (2015). Impact Assessments as Negotiated Knowledge. In: Gutwirth, S., Leenes, R., de Hert, P. (eds) Reforming European Data Protection Law. Law, Governance and Technology Series(), vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9385-8_5

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