Privacy, Data Protection and Law Enforcement. Opacity of the Individual and Transparency of Power

Reprint of an article of 1996 SUMMARY: Introduction; 1 Principles of the democratic constitutional state; 1.1 The Recognition of Human Rights in their Double Function; 1.2 The Rule of Law; 1.3 Democracy; 2 The democratic constitutional state and the invention of two complementary legal tools of power control; 2.1 Limiting power through opacity tools; 2.2 Channelling power through transparency tools; 3 Privacy as a tool for opacity (creating zones of non-interference); 3.1 The negative role of privacy; 3.2 The positive role of privacy; 3.3 The non-absolute nature of privacy; 4 Data protection as a tool for transparency; 4.1 Introduction; 4.2 The rationale behind data protection; 4.3 Data protection as an opacity tool?; 4.4 The charter of fundamental rights of the european union; 5 The shift from opacity towards transparency in european human rights law; 5.1 European human rights law and the legality requirement; 5.2 The success of the legality requirement; 5.3 A critical comment about the strasbourg focus on the legality requirement; 5.4 The danger of proceduralisation; 5.5 A requirement fundamental to opacity: necessary in a democratic state; 6. Combining privacy and data protection 6.1 Combining the tools; 6.2 Determining the switch; 6.3 An example: camera surveillance; 6.4 A second example: passenger profiling; 6.5 Workable criteria?; Conclusion.1