Data Protection And Privacy Under Pressure

Since the Snowden revelations, the adoption in May 2016 of the General Data Protection Regulation and several ground-breaking judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union, data protection and privacy are high on the agenda of policymakers, industries and the legal research community. Against this backdrop, Data Protection and Privacy under Pressure sheds light on key developments where individuals’ rights to data protection and privacy are at stake. The book discusses the persistent transatlantic tensions around various EU-US data transfer mechanisms and EU jurisdiction claims over non-EU-based companies, both sparked by milestone court cases. Additionally, it scrutinises the expanding control or surveillance mechanisms and interconnection of databases in the areas of migration control, internal security and law enforcement, and oversight thereon. Finally, it explores current and future legal challenges related to big data and automated decision-making in the contexts of policing, pharmaceutics and advertising.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this practical guide to privacy and data protection law in the EU covers every aspect of the subject, including the protection of private life as a fundamental – constitutional – right, the application of international and/or regional conventions protecting the right to privacy, privacy rights in the context of electronic communications or at the workplace, and the protection of individuals regarding the processing of personal data relating to them. Following a general introduction, the monograph assembles its information and guidance in two parts: (1) protection of privacy, including an in-depth overview of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and an analysis of the European e-Privacy Directive regarding the protection of privacy in electronic communications; (2) personal data protect on, including a detailed analysis of the provisions of the GDPR, an up-to-date overview of the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU and of the opinions and guidelines of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).

This Research Handbook is an insightful overview of the key rules, concepts and tensions in privacy and data protection law. It highlights the increasing global significance of this area of law, illustrating the many complexities in the field through a blend of theoretical and empirical perspectives.

The growth of data-collecting goods and services, such as ehealth and mhealth apps, smart watches, mobile fitness and dieting apps, electronic skin and ingestible tech, combined with recent technological developments such as increased capacity of data storage, artificial intelligence and smart algorithms, has spawned a big data revolution that has reshaped how we understand and approach health data. Recently the COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded a variety of data privacy issues. The collection, storage, sharing and analysis of health- related data raises major legal and ethical questions relating to privacy, data protection, profiling, discrimination, surveillance, personal autonomy and dignity. This book examines health privacy questions in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the general data privacy legal framework of the European Union (EU). The GDPR is a complex and evolving body of law that aims to deal with several technological and societal health data privacy problems, while safeguarding public health interests and addressing its internal gaps and uncertainties. The book answers a diverse range of questions including: What role can the GDPR play in regulating health surveillance and big (health) data analytics? Can it catch up with internet-age developments? Are the solutions to the challenges posed by big health data to be found in the law? Does the GDPR provide adequate tools and mechanisms to ensure public health objectives and the effective protection of privacy? How does the GDPR deal with data that concern children’s health and academic research? By analysing a number of diverse questions concerning big health data under the GDPR from various perspectives, this book will appeal to those interested in privacy, data protection, big data, health sciences, information technology, the GDPR, EU and human rights law.

The advancement of information and communication technology has led to a multi-dimensional impact in the areas of law, regulation, and governance. Many countries have declared data protection a fundamental right and established reforms of data protection law aimed at modernizing the global regulatory framework. Due to these advancements in policy, the legal domain has to face many challenges at a rapid pace making it essential to study and discuss policies and laws that regulate and monitor these activities and anticipate new laws that should be implemented in order to protect users. The Handbook of Research on Cyber Law, Data Protection, and Privacy focuses acutely on the complex relationships of technology and law both in terms of substantive legal responses to legal, social, and ethical issues arising in connection with growing public engagement with technology and the procedural impacts and transformative potential of technology on traditional and emerging forms of dispute resolution. Covering a range of topics such as artificial intelligence, data protection, and social media, this major reference work is ideal for government officials, policymakers, industry professionals, academicians, scholars, researchers, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This book explores the emerging economic reality of health data pools from the perspective of European Union policy and law. The contractual sharing of health data for research purposes is giving rise to a free movement of research data, which is strongly encouraged at European policy level within the Digital Single Market Strategy. However, it has also a strong impact on data subjects' fundamental right to data protection and smaller businesses and research entities ability to carry out research and compete in innovation markets. Accordingly the work questions under which conditions health data sharing is lawful under European data protection and competition law. For these purposes, the work addresses the following sub-questions: i) which is the emerging innovation paradigm in digital health research?; ii) how are health data pools addressed at European policy level?; iii) do European data protection and competition law promote health data-driven innovation objectives, and how?; iv) which are the limits posed by the two frameworks to the free pooling of health data? The underlying assumption of the work is that both branches of European Union law are key regulatory tools for the creation of a common European health data space as envisaged in the Commissions 2020 European strategy for data. It thus demonstrates that both European data protection law, as defined under the General Data Protection Regulation, and European competition law and policy set research enabling regimes regarding health data, provided specific normative conditions are met. From a further perspective, both regulatory frameworks place external limits to the freedom to share (or not share) research valuable data.

In the contemporary information society, organisations increasingly rely on the collection and analysis of large-scale data (popularly called ‘big data’) to make decisions. These processes, which take place largely beyond the individual’s knowledge, produce a cascade of effects that go beyond privacy and data protection. Should we focus on the possibilities of tackling these often negative effects through other areas of law, or maybe even find new solutions to cope with the dark side of big data? This ground-breaking book is the first to address this crucially important question in detail. Among the issues raised in the analysis are such vital elements as the following: − what is meant by ‘big data’; – ‘privacy’ according to the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union; – what the European Union legal framework on privacy and data protection consists of and how it functions in the light of big data; – what companies, governments and other organisations are permitted to do with big data under the current regulatory framework; – the central importance of personal autonomy; – circumstances that influence whether or not the right to privacy is triggered; – big data’s possible impact on democracy through, inter alia, potentially limiting freedom of expression; – how governmental or corporate surveillance chills the receiver’s gathering of information and ideas; – selective offering of choices or information, or manipulation of people’s ideas; – procedural aspects that influence the extrapolation of normative concepts of privacy and data protection; and – how discrimination occurs in big data. This book foregrounds a critical scrutiny of commercial uses of big data – its scale, its limited capacity for independent oversight and the expected prevalence of interference with individuals’ rights. The author’s conclusions explore possible legal alternatives to mitigate the negative impact of big data, using legal instruments, case law and legal academic literature in her analysis. Because the amount of digital data keeps growing and the private lives of individuals are increasingly taking place online – and because of the opacity of the big data process, the fundamental values that are at stake, and the speed of technological developments compared to the pace of legal reform – this comprehensive assessment of flaws in the current framework and possible practical solutions will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, policymakers and government officials in all legal fields related to privacy and data protection.

This book assesses data protection rules that are applicable to the processing of personal data in a law enforcement context. It offers the first extensive analysis of the LED and Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. It illustrates the challenges arising from the unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments at both national and EU level. Taking a practical approach, it exemplifies situations where the application of data protection instruments could give rise to a lowering of data protection standards where the data protection rules applicable in the law enforcement context are interpreted broadly. The scope of data protection instruments applied by law enforcement authorities impacts processing for purposes of border control, migration management and asylum because there is an unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments.