PRACTIS

PRACTIS's mission was to increase readiness and awareness to the impact of emerging technologies on privacy issues among citizens, policy makers and stakeholders. The main goals were to identify and assess evolving impacts on privacy that might result from various emerging technologies and new scientific knowledge and to propose means to cope with potential future risks to privacy in both the legal and social spheres, while maximising the benefits of these new technologies. Moreover, PRACTIS strived to formulate a framework for thinking about the ethical and legal issues related to privacy in the future, when the emerging technologies will prevail, and to explore novel policy options to address the needs of citizens in a world of new technologies while maintaining privacy.

PRACTIS presents novel results on the potential impacts of various emerging technologies on privacy threats, enhancement and changing perceptions. Scenarios that reflect these evolving changes have been constructed. Changes of attitudes towards privacy among the “Web Generation” were explored by confronting high school students in several countries with different potential situations enabled by emerging technologies in their everyday lives. Revisiting ethical and legal principles for a technologically evolving society and suggesting guidelines promoting the value-sensitive design of potentially privacy-affecting technologies are some of the project’s results.

PRACTIS’ main goals are:

• To identify and assess evolving impacts on privacy that might result from various emerging technologies and new scientific knowledge and to propose means to cope with potential future risks to privacy in both the legal and social spheres, while maximising the benefits of these new technologies.
• To formulate a framework for thinking about the ethical and legal issues related to privacy in the future when the emerging technologies will prevail.

Further objective of PRACTIS is to explore novel policy options to address the needs of citizens in a world of new technologies while maintaining privacy.