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Data Protection doesn’t protect data. It protects the people the data represents.
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In the digital age, collecting and storing information has become easier and cheaper than ever. Cameras and sensors can be found in most public places, as well as in the devices in our pockets. Our reliance on cloud services and the digitisation of more and more areas of life intensify the amount of personal information generated about us.
This has created an incentive for governments and private corporations to retain as much personal information as possible, even without knowing in advance what this data might be used for. In the age of AI the analysis of large amounts of data has also become faster and easier.
Information that is identifiable about one individual is called personal information and falls under data protection. While there is no universal data protection framework, most countries have some level of protection of personal information. These protections limit the scope and purpose of processing personal information and grant individuals the rights to take control of their data.
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Case Studies: Even data that is retained and stored with good intentions can later be abused for harmful purposes. History serves as a warning reminder of what can happen when data falls in the wrong hands:
These historical cases show why data minimisation and access control are not just technical preferences—they are ethical imperatives.
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The interest in our personal information has grown drastically over the past years. With the advent of digital technology and the internet, it has become extremely easy and inexpensive to collect large amounts of information about individuals. The business model of many internet companies relies on the collection of personal data from billions of people. This large amount of data allows the prediction of individual user behaviour, which can have negative consequences for society at large.
Watch the movie “Made to Measure” to learn what personal data can reveal about us.
Importantly, companies like Facebook, Google and TikTok don’t sell their users’ data directly. Instead, they sell access to users’ attention, which is targeted through intrusive profiling of individual behaviour. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown how these large troves of data can be used for the manipulation of society and to influence elections or influence societal debates. This is why it is crucial to limit the processing of personal information to the specific purpose for which it was collected.
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The book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” from Shoshana Zuboff from 2019 examines the new business models enabled by the aggregation of large amounts of personal data.
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