Big Data Challenges and Consumer Surveillance: A Comparative Legal Study of Privacy in Germany and China

Professor Cheung, Anne Shann Yue   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Chen Yongxi Clement   (Co-Investigator)

Professor Schulz Wolfgang Werner   (Co-principal investigator)

Dr Seitz Florian   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Lose Martin   (Co-Investigator)

24

2015-01-01

59200

Big Data Challenges and Consumer Surveillance: A Comparative Legal Study of Privacy in Germany and China

Big Data Challenges, China, Consumer Surveillance, Germany, Legal Study

Law,Data Mining

G-HKU703/14

Germany/Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme

2014

Completed

1) to find out how the ""Big Data"" undertakings impact on citizens’ privacy as well as civic engagement, and how to mitigate the impacts through legal reforms; 2) to study and analyse the emerging legal norms from the EU regime and German courts that have provided new normative basis to solve unprecedented problems in the ever advancing technological age; 3) to examine new conceptualization of privacy brought by Big Data under the EU’s and China’s current political and business settings. The conceptualization is built on the different dimensions of privacy, their underlying values, and the technologies involved; 4) to design a conceptual framework for intrusions of the former kind, an extensive literature review will be undertaken regarding the techno-social discussions on the technological watershed brought by Big Data, on the one hand, and to philosophical and legal doctrinal reflections on the concept of privacy as well as theories on surveillance by commercial industry, on the other; 5) to design a best governance model based on fair personal data practice tackling (1) violations of privacy in terms of individual control of personal data handling (determining the collection, use and dissemination of personally identifiable data) beyond the current model of consent; (2) invasions of privacy in terms of non-interference (remaining anonymity or free from decisional interference); 6) to address the specific challenges that a state will face on personal data protection and to explore ways to overcome them when different industries and stakeholders have conflicting interests.