Data Analytics and Privacy

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/R_DAP

Course Objective

Data Analytics and Privacy focuses on the role of European fundamental rights and legal principles in the regulation of data analytics, with a general focus on the right to privacy and data protection. After this course:The student will identify and deconstruct the main legal implications concerning data protection and privacy, in particular with regard to the European legal framework.The student will describe and apply the basics of European Union data protection law.The student will know and understand the basics of data analytics in the context of privacy and data protection.The student will outline and reflect on potential interferences with fundamental rights following data analytics.

Course Content

Data analytics has the ability to pose significant challenges to privacy, human autonomy, and dignity. The ability to influence people in ways they can act against their own interests is what political scientists describe as power. Data analytics as an instrument to develop knowledge and facilitate the exercise of power is a phenomenon that requires regulation. Power in a constitutional democracy, whether exercised by the state or other parties, has to be subject to the law. Law offers the option to mediate between conflicting interests guiding toward a legal solution to a problem rather than one which is based on brute force. Privacy is a societal norm that is codified in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. EU data protection legislation in the form of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates the processing of personal data in EU member states. Privacy and data protection is a funny pair that have provoked many lawyers to write relentless essays on. Gutwirth and De Hert, two prominent privacy and data protection lawyers from Belgium, use an interesting distinction between the two. They refer to privacy as an opacity instrument, because it protects a sphere in which the individual's behaviour is not being recorded. They refer to data protection as a transparency instrument, because it makes the exercise of power knowledgeable for those who are on the receiving end. Privacy and data protection laws offer rules that can be complied with by parties who want to use data analytics in their strategies and policies. In this course, the basics of privacy and data protection law are explained in the context of data analytics. The idea is for students of computer science to understand the basics of the law and for students of law to understand the basics of data analytics. An objective is to understand the interaction between data analytics and privacy laws. An outcome is to understand how the laws of privacy and data protection apply to the development of computer systems, platforms, apps, software, etc.

Teaching Methods

Lectures, tutorials.

Method of Assessment

Exam
- 35 Multiple choice questions worth 2 points each; 2 Open-ended essay style questions, each worth 15 points each.

Literature

Made available via Canvas.