Niko Tsakalakis,

Data governance in the Web era:

LL.B. Law, LL.M. Int. Commercial ADP

nt4g14@soton.ac.uk

Issues of privacy and protection in a Web that never forgets

University of Southampton

Privacy on the Web has always been a paradox:

Even though the perceived anonymity due to pseudonyms and distance encouraged users to disclose information more easily than in real
life, the lack of understanding of security mechanisms, the ease of use of search engines and the dominance of social media in all aspects of
everyday life have led to major privacy risks.
The Internet of Things, Big/Open data, the Semantic Web all promise a revolution to what was previously available as online data:
Geolocation, fitness statistics, medical records, behavioural patterns the list goes on.
States are in the process of re-evaluating their data protection policies, to adjust to this emerging technologies. The law has previously been
accused of being too slow to follow technological advances.
There is an increased need to understand exactly what new challenges the new technologies will pose to users privacy and to data
protection. Some indicative areas of research can be found below:
Surveillance
o Increased
surveillance
media

Jurisdiction
US Black box Act / We are watching you Act
EU Draft GFPR 2012/0011
Several Data Protection regimes in Asia

preventive
of social

o Increased
(unlawful)
profiling of users?

We are under-going reforms globally on data protection laws.

Among the issues still under discussion:

New legal rights

How will jurisdiction be defined in an inter-connected world,

where subjects, data controllers and applicable laws could all
belong to different legal systems?

o Right to be disconnected
o Right to be invisible
o Right of portability
o Freedom of speech vs Personal data
o Right to be forgotten

Internet of Things
Big Data

More aspects of life available online:

o Mass collection / mass processing of data

Devices direct communication with other devices

New online devices (fitness trackers, wearables,
smart appliances)
Raw censor data in the cloud

o New opportunities to create data sets of previously noncombinable data

o New ways of profiling?
o Increased chance of inadvertently publishing sensitive data?
o Is anonymity on the Web still achievable?

Open data
Governments
and
companies
are
encouraged to embrace open formats and
make data sets publicly available.

How much do users understand their devices?

What is the quality of user consent to services?
Do we need a reform of how user consent is
currently taken and re-assess its value?

Incomplete training, incomplete legislation

and incomplete comprehension of data
policies have led to breaches of sensitive
information.

* The word cloud above was created from the recent #drinkdriversnameontwitter incident, where Surrey and Sussex Police published arrested but not-yet convicted drivers names on Twitter