Crime prevention, dataveillance, and the regulation of information communication technologies

Whether privacy is an adequate legal safeguard against intrusive government or private sector activity remains open for further exploration. Although the criminal law has always imposed limits on the ability of police to enter private premises and seize property associated with criminal activity, the appropriate balance between a claimant’s personal rights and the broader public interest in preventing crime or promoting safety is not always clear. Similarly, the law preserves the rights of “mass private” property owners and their agents to selectively exclude people from entering or remaining on premises such as shopping malls, sports venues, concert halls, or pubs and nightclubs (Warren 1995). In these types of spaces, many new forms of information dissemination through ICTs reconfigure the balance between anonymity and the ability to monitor an individual’s movements, shopping preferences, and behaviors (Australian Law Reform Commission 2008). Our ongoing research interrogates the highly contested legal relationships between privacy, crime prevention, and new technology and how these are reconciled in legislation and judicial decision-making in light of due process requirements (Rule 2007; Solove 2008; Sutton et al. 2008; Westin 1967).