Individuals – willingly or otherwise – tend to generate significant amounts of information in the course of their daily lives. This information can be processed by both state and non-state actors to generate profiles that may help predict future behaviour. While such categorization may in some circumstances be benign or even desired by the subject, if the information processing is unwanted or unknown it may implicate individual autonomy in important ways. This course will consider the normative values that may be threatened by various kinds of information gathering and processing, and consider what legal protections – if any – may be appropriate. Students will be exposed to the regulatory regimes and legal frameworks that govern the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in both Hong Kong and in other jurisdictions. We will consider laws and policies that apply to both the private and the public sectors, and the ways in which they differ. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon different philosophical accounts of privacy, and consider which one is best reflected by the Hong Kong legal system. Students will consider how best privacy can (or should) be balanced off against commercial or government interests in the personal information of individuals. Thematic topics will include (but will not be limited to) the surveillance of public space for commercial purposes, privacy and online social networks, the coming rise of ‘wearable’ computing, the warrantless collection of ‘metadata’ by the state, and the privacy implications of cloud computing. This course incorporates an extended range of mandatory readings and students will be expected to extensively participate orally in the classroom. A research paper on a related topic of the student’s choosing will be the primary form of assessment.