For over a week, here at the University of Milan, we had the pleasure to discuss issues of innovation and digitalisation with Prof. Giancarlo Vilella, who currently serves as the Director-General at the European Parliament for Innovation and Technological Support.
According to the European Commission (EC) innovation is vital to European competitiveness in the global economy. The UN embraced innovation among others in its Sustainable Development Goal 9. At the same time, innovations in technology raise issues in the use of data and right to privacy.
The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. Indeed GDPR came into force on May 25th 2018 and the residents in the EU now have the power to hold companies to account as never before.
In this context, the LL.M students had great discussions with Prof. Vilella on the role of digitalisation and innovation in number of pressing legal, political and social problems we see today. The issue of privacy had stood out quite interestingly:
On the one hand, there was a consensus that the right to privacy was an inherent right that stems from the right to be let alone and individual will, in respect to having some control over what we would like to disclose to others. On the other hand, we are seldom to our privacy when we register to vote, pay taxes, create health records or even put household garbage out by the road.
Perhaps we shouldn’t worry, as they say; if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear! Well, at least in the European perspective, when we account human rights, our privacy is indeed fundamental as per the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 (Article 8), Treaty on the Functioning of the EU 1957 (Article 16) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights 2000 (Articles 7 & 8). Nevertheless there are number of issues at stake threatening our right to privacy.
Issues at stake: Where do we draw the line?
In March 2018, Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal revealed that up to 87 million Facebook users’ data were used for psychographic profiling by the firm that worked with the Trump election team and the Brexit campaign.
On January 18th 2018, the US Senate approved a six-year extension of Section 702 of the FISA 2008. The means for six more years the US government, without a warrant, may collect emails, texts, phone calls and other private data from foreigners abroad from American companies like Google, Facebook and AT&T.
In June 2017, the EC fined Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine. In addition to being an infringement of EU Competition Law, EC recognises that consumers pay for the Google search engine service with their data.
These are the current issues that remind us how valuable our data could be and equally, how far reaching the consequences of the loss of data privacy could also be.
Some like the Chinese government; works on a Police Cloud which aims to collect data from criminal and medical records to travel bookings, online purchases and social media comments and link it to everyone’s id card and face. And it’s not like that China doesn’t have data protection laws. In fact, the new Chinese data privacy standard looks more far-reaching than GDPR. If this doesn’t stop Beijing’s plan to assign social credits based on citizens’ trustworthiness, then regulations that open doors for censorship is the path to drop. Nothing illustrates this better than comparing Freedom in the World with Freedom on the Net. States who subject their citizens with online censorship do find themselves on the list where freedoms are undermined.
What is the way out for a democratic society?
In Europe, the new GDPR signals a breakthrough for strengthening data protection and promising a better way for innovation where individual rights are respected. As a community committed to sustainable development, we understand the benefits of efficient regulation in building good governance and strong institutions.
Innovation in tech industry is not different from any other sector and its steps should always trigger the considerations of legitimacy and fairness in a democratic society. Development is fundamental for growth, but its way better when sustainability is ensured and human rights are upheld.
