Section: New Results

Empowerment and Big Data on Personal Data: from Portability to Agency (Axis 3)

Participants : Nicolas Anciaux [correspondent] , Riad Ladjel, Philippe Pucheral, Guillaume Scerri.

The current highly centralised model of personal data management is based on established business practices that have led to widespread adoption, in contrast to user-centric and privacy-oriented systems such as PDMS, which therefore need to be studied in terms of technical, economic and legal feasibility and adoptability with researchers from other disciplines. In the context of the DATAIA GDP-ERE project, we are analyzing the technical and legal conditions under which individuals can exercise their right to data portability. Over the period, we have jointly studied a new notion that characterizes the true power of the individual over his or her personal data: agency. In particular, we have shown how the notion of agency, which comes from the social sciences, can be transposed and used to our context to measure the empowerment of individuals in Big Data applications. This study led to two joint publications with law researchers over the period, in particular in the journal Dalloz IP/IT [5], as well as several international panels (see in Section Popularization, e.g., panel at BDVA forum organized in Helsinky with the European Commission, at the Annual Forum of Trans Europ Expert, etc.)