Publications of Székely, I.
Freedom of information: a constitutive public good in democratic societies. In: Duff AS, editor. Research handbook on information policy. Cheltenham, UK - Northampton, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing; 2021. p. 205-19.
Freedom of information: a constitutive public good in democratic societies
Freedom of information, or in a broader sense, access to public information is a fundamental element of constitutional democracies and rule-of-law societies. It is a strong guarantee of transparent governance of public matters, and its efficient implementation is a precondition to exercising other rights, in particular freedom of expression and participation in democratic decision-making. Constitutional democracy is more than a form of government or a legal system; the existence of certain public goods is indispensable for such political and social regimes. Authors who investigate public goods in an extended sense, separated from their original economic meaning, attempt to define a core set of such goods without which a Western-type liberal democracy cannot be maintained. If we regard the importance of FOI in democratic societies in light of the above theories and analyses, we can reasonably state that FOI is one of the constitutive public goods in society.
Surveillance and resilience: Relationships, dynamics, and consequences. Democracy and Security. 2018;14(3).
Surveillance and resilience: Relationships, dynamics, and consequences
‘Resilience’ is a contested term with varying and ambiguous meaning in governmental, business and social discourses. Surveillance is increasingly relied upon as an instrument for resilience, enhancing the capability of anticipating, preventing or recovering from adversity, thus preserving the fabric of society and the state. However surveillance itself might undesirably erode social freedoms, rights, and other public goods. In the present study we focus on the interrelationship of surveillance and resilience. Studying the relationships between surveillance and resilience requires not only the theoretical study of possible examples but also the exploration and evaluation of the resilient entity’s core properties, strategies and tactics and the external observer’s stance towards the entity in question. Furthermore, different contexts may exhibit different effects of surveillance on resilience. For example, an increase in surveillance by a democratic state may lead to increasing resilience of the state in the face of terrorist attacks but may also lead to the decreasing resilience of that society’s ability to exercise democratic values. The various models generated by these differing relationships will be explored with relation to three examples: the surveillance of international migration, the surveillance of extremist views, and the surveillance of digital financial transactions.
Moving away from the security-privacy trade-off: The use of the test of proportionality in decision support. In: Friedewald M, Burgess P, Cas J, van Lieshout M, Bellanova R, Peissl W, editors. Surveillance, privacy and security: Citizens’ perspectives. Routledge; 2017. p. 155-76.
Excercising Access Rights in Hungary. In: Norris C, de Hert P, L’Hoiry X, Galletta A, editors. The Unacountable State of Surveillance: Excercising Access Rights in Europe. Springer International Publishing AG; 2017. p. 135-80.
Excercising Access Rights in Hungary
This chapter outlines the experiences of attempting to exercise one’s right of access in Hungary. Using rich, ethnographic examples, this chapter tests how easy or difficult it is for a data subject based in Hungary to obtain their personal data, firstly by locating the required information about organisations and their data controllers and secondly by submitting subject access requests to these organisations. The chapter reflects on the differences (if any) between public and private sector organisations in the process of responding to access requests as well as the role of the national Data Protection Authority in Hungary.
Data protection authorities and information technology. Computer Law and Security Review. 2017;33(4):421-33.
Data protection authorities and information technology
The ability of data protection authorities (DPAs) to gain and deploy sufficient knowledge of new technological developments in their regulation of personal-information practices is an important consideration now and for the future. However, DPAs’ capacity to keep abreast of these developments has been questionable, and improvements in this are a matter of concern, especially given DPAs’ task requirements under the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This article reports the findings of a recent survey of EU DPAs that explore the problems they have in comprehending new technologies and how they are dealing with them.
Do Archives Have a Future in the Digital Age? Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies. 2017;4:1-16.
Do Archives Have a Future in the Digital Age?
The rapid development of information and communication technologies pose significant challenges to archival theory and practice. The analysis of the dominant information operators of the archival institutions in the respective paradigms of archival history shows that today’s internet-based services can replicate all the main functions of the archival institutions, at least at the level of the fundamental information operators, on a mass scale. Despite these developments, the author argues that archives are under no direct threat of abolition or loss of function in the digital age, not only because of institutional inertia and traditions, but also their role in preserving context and preserving physical copies, and their institutional responsibility which will continue to be an important social, legal and administrative requirement in the future, too. Keywords: archives, information operators, archival paradigms, digitization, internet-based services, physical copies, migration of document formats, preservation of context.
From a model pupil to a problematic grown-up: Enforcing privacy and data protection in Hungary. In: Wright D, de Hert P, editors. Enforcing Privacy: Regulatory, Legal and Technological Approaches. Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 79-104.
Timing the Right to Be Forgotten: A study into “time” as a factor in deciding about retention or erasure of data. In: Gutwirth S, Leenes R, de Hert P, editors. Reforming European Data Protection Law. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media; 2015. p. 171-201. (Law, Governance and Technology - Issues in Privacy and Data Protection).
Timing the Right to Be Forgotten: A study into “time” as a factor in deciding about retention or erasure of data
The so-called “Right to Be Forgotten or Erasure” (RTBF), article 17 of the proposed General Data Protection Regulation, provides individuals with a means to oppose the often persistent digital memory of the Web. Because digital information technologies affect the accessibility of information over time and time plays a fundamental role in biological forgetting, ‘time’ is a factor that should play a pivotal role in the RTBF. This chapter explores the roles that ‘time’ plays and could play in decisions regarding the retention or erasure of data. Two roles are identified: (1) ‘time’ as the marker of a discrete moment where the grounds for retention no longer hold and ‘forgetting’ of the data should follow and (2) ‘time’ as a factor in the balance of interests, as adding or removing weight to the request to ‘forget’ personal information or its opposing interest. The chapter elaborates on these two roles from different perspectives and highlights the importance and underdeveloped understanding of the second role.
The Four Paradigms of Archival History and the Challenges of the Future. In: Merviö M, editor. Management and Participation in the Public Sphere. IGI-Global; 2015. p. 1-37.
The Four Paradigms of Archival History and the Challenges of the Future
In the multi-millennial history of archives four successive paradigms can be distinguished. In the archival systems that can be designated respectively as entitlement-attestation, national, public, and global ones, their primary or new objectives, key institutions, specialists and target audience as well as applied information technologies and characteristic problems show significant differences. Alongside enduring elements of continuity new key features, functions and impacts appear, which together fundamentally change the actual role and ideology of archives. With an information-centered approach, this study attempts to include the most important characteristics of these respective archival paradigms in one coherent system, with a brief overview of the challenges the archives of the future may face.
Surveillance and Resilience in Theory and Practice. Media and Communication. 2015.
Surveillance and Resilience in Theory and Practice
Surveillance is often used as a tool in resilience strategies towards the threat posed by terrorist attacks and other serious crime. “Resilience” is a contested term with varying and ambiguous meaning in governmental, business and social discourses, and it is not clear how it relates to other terms that characterise processes or states of being. Resilience is often assumed to have positive connotations, but critics view it with great suspicion, regarding it as a neo-liberal governmental strategy. However, we argue that surveillance, introduced in name of greater security, may itself erode social freedoms and public goods such as privacy, paradoxically requiring societal resilience, whether precautionary or in mitigation of the harms it causes to the public goods of free societies. This article develops new models and extends existing ones to describe resilience processes unfolding over time and in anticipation of, or in reaction to, adversities of different kinds and severity, and explores resilience both on the plane of abstract analysis and in the context of societal responses to mass surveillance. The article thus focuses upon surveillance as a special field for conceptual analysis and modelling of situations, and for evaluating contemporary developments in “surveillance societies”.
Archivos, archivistas, paradigmas archivísticos: desafíos en la sociedad de la información. In: Torres N, editor. Hacia una política integral de gestión de la información pública. Todo lo que siempre quisimos saber sobre archivos (y nunca nos animamos a preguntarle al acceso a la información). Buenos Aires: CELE, Universidad de Palermo; 2014. p. 171-83.
Archivos, archivistas, paradigmas archivísticos: desafíos en la sociedad de la información
This paper contains the Spanish translation of the presentation “Archives, archivists, archival paradigms: challenges in the information society” recorded live at the conference “Access to Archives and Information: Towards a new epistemic community”, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, 8 October 2013, and published in the volume “Hacia una política integral de gestión de la información pública. Todo lo que siempre quisimos saber sobre archivos (y nunca nos animamos a preguntarle al acceso a la información)”, edited by Natalia Torres. The paper provides an overview of the raison d’etre of archives, the paradigms of archival history, the types of information preserved in archives, the possible convergence of records management and archival practice, and the challenges of the information society.
Building our future glass homes: An essay about influencing the future through regulation. Computer Law & Security Review. 2013;29(5):540-53.
Building our future glass homes: An essay about influencing the future through regulation
The present paper surveys the prospects and possibilities of regulating the application areas of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) – or in a broader sense, of influencing the future way of life – at the intersection of law, technology and society. It dissects the anticipated further erosion of personal privacy – the focus area of the essay – caused by technological developments and related interests. After sketching out an ironic dystopia, in which the idea of transparency is foisted upon the public by future technological developments, the author contemplates the relationships between legal regulation and the underlying values in the predictable but unknowable milieu of future life conditions. While studying the immutability of fundamental values, the author offers a brief survey of the role of public opinion, as well as of the limitations of taking into account the majority opinion, followed by a thought experiment about the possible ways of regulating the “Code”, approaching it from the direction of two fundamental rights, the right to human dignity and the freedom of academic research. After reaching conflicting conclusions and making a few suggestions about possible ways to regulate the area, the author makes a proposal about the introduction of a small-scale experimental tool, metaphorically named as a predictive learning model of regulation. Despite the difficulties and the uncertainties, the essay's overall perspective on the role of legal regulation is not a pessimistic one, as long as it is used flexibly and in conjunction with other means of regulation. Keywords: Future and emerging technologies; Privacy; Regulation; Fundamental values; Predictive learning models of regulation
The right to forget, the right to be forgotten. Personal reflections on the fate of personal data in the information society. In: Gutwirth S, Leenes R, de Hert P, Poullet Y, editors. European Data Protection: In Good Health? Springer Science+Business Media B.V.; 2012. p. 347-63.
The right to forget, the right to be forgotten. Personal reflections on the fate of personal data in the information society
As the paper's subtitle suggests, my intention has been to present my views in a format that is decidedly different from the standard style of academic writing. Amalgamating the languages of scientific and literary approaches, the paper is meant to establish a common thread that runs through the separate topics of data protection literature – a leitmotif centered on the problematics of remembering and forgetting, if you will. As a result, readers will not find any numbered sections, bullet points, footnotes or end notes which would hinder the continuity of reading. There is, however, an annotated reference list at the end.
Regulating the future? Law, ethics, and emerging technologies. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. 2011;9(3):180-94.
Regulating the future? Law, ethics, and emerging technologies
The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of the legal implications which may be relevant to the ethical aspects of emerging technologies, to explore the existing situation in the area of legal regulation at EU level, and to formulate recommendations for the lawmakers. The analysis is based on the premise that the law is supposed to invoke moral principles. Speculative findings are formulated on the basis of analyzing specific emerging technologies; empirical findings are based on a research conducted in the whole legal corpus of the EU. In the area of network-based technologies the already existing and elaborated legal frameworks can be used in an extended manner; artificial intelligence based technologies call for alterations in several branches of law; while interface technologies show the difficulty and complexity of regulating interdisciplinary fields. The legal implications of emerging technologies have attracted only a minimal legislative attention in the competent bodies of the EU. The paper provides a systemic approach towards transmitting ethical norms to the application of emerging technologies through legal regulation, and formulates detailed recommendations in various areas of such technologies.
The Four Paradigms of Archival History. Journal of Information Technology Research. 2010;3(4):51-82.
The Four Paradigms of Archival History
With an information-centered approach four successive paradigms can be distinguished in the multi-millennial history of archives. Alongside enduring elements of continuity new key features, functions and impacts appear, which together fundamentally change the actual role and ideology of archives. In the archival systems that can be designated respectively as entitlement-attestation, national, public, and global ones, their primary or new objectives, key institutions, specialists and target audience as well as applied information technologies and characteristic problems show significant differences. This study attempts to include the most important characteristics of these respective archival paradigms in one coherent system, with brief reference to the evolution of the two other major memory-preserving institutions: the library and the museum.
Freedom of Information versus Privacy: Friends or Foes? In: Gutwirth S, Poullet Y, de Hert P, de Terwangne C, Nouwt S, editors. Reinventing Data Protection? Springer Science+Business Media B.V.; 2009. p. 293-316.
Hungary. In: Rule JB, Greenleaf G, editors. Global Privacy Protection: The First Generation. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.; 2008. p. 174-206.
Hungary
This paper provides a detailed description and analysis of the birth, development and future prospects of privacy protection in Hungary. Starting with a brief overview of early legal antecedents, it describes the semi-public development of the new concept of informational rights in the last years of the Communist regime, emphasizes the role of these rights in the democratic turn and the period of transition, and analyzes the new system of fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the new laws on the protection of personal data in Hungary. The author – one of the founders of the new concept – evaluates the role of the new supervisory institution, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and presents some of the Commissioner’s landmark cases, which had shaped the legal and public perception of the right to privacy and data protection. The paper discusses the underlying processes and international influences and devotes a chapter to analyzing public opinion in this area, including the professional reception of the new rights and the attitudes of civic associations. Following the logic of the edited volume, the author gives a brief overview of national culture and traditions and analyzes the interests and attitudes of the winners and losers of the changes. In the final part of the paper the author gives an overview of the successes and failures, and summarizes the prospects for the future in the area of privacy and data protection in Hungary.
Central and Eastern Europe: Starting from Scratch. In: Florini A, editor. The Right to Know. Transparency for an Open World. New York: Columbia University Press; 2007. p. 116-42.