Abstract

The paper has three parts. First, a survey and analysis is given ofthe structure of individual rights in the recent EU Directive ondata protection. It is argued that at the core of this structure isan unexplicated notion of what the data subject can `reasonablyexpect' concerning the further processing of information about himor herself. In the second part of the paper it is argued thattheories of privacy popular among philosophers are not able to shed much light on the issues treated in the Directive, whichare, arguably, among the central problems pertaining to theprotection of individual rights in the information society. Inthe third part of the paper, some suggestions are made for a richerphilosophical theory of data protection and privacy. It is arguedthat this account is better suited to the task of characterizingthe central issues raised by the Directive.