[MyData & Open Data] existing legal frameworks of biometrics

Fri Apr 4 16:53:31 UTC 2014

My take on the concepts (version 0.9 ;-):

MY DATA

I would see My data as data “generated” in my use of digital tools and engagement with electronic information and communications systems. My digital trail of gold or rubbish.  

I think this is a useful concept and different from personal data.

OWNERSHIP

I may or may not “own” this data depending on the tools and the contracts involved.  

Location data from my GPS DiY health sensor tracker is different from location data that my mobile company has on me, or location data that a random app collects from my smartphone under the app permissions T&Cs.

Property is a incredibly tricky thing to establish with intangible things such as data. There is “intellectual property”, as in copyright and database right. But also ownership of infrastructure and any contractual or licensing agreements.

Facts cannot be copyrighted. So data automatically generated - e.g. anything with sensors - is probably a fact.  

Nobody “owns” facts, but if I take a ton of research measurements from a lab, they will claim I stole “their” research data. And instinctively you would agree, but what is property of data?

See this for a discussion in the context of US health data (page 78)  http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v25/25HarvJLTech69.pdf You may disagree with some of the conclusions but it is quite useful, I think.

Database right in Europe protects the investment in creating databases. So if you are using someone else’s infrastructure it’s very possible they at least share the “ownership” of this exploitation right, but this is not exactly the same as what many people in the WG mean by “ownership", I believe.

ACCESS

Your right to “access” (subject access in EU law), as Walter explained, is not the same as “ownership" as in property. It means you can know what information is held about you by an organisation at a point in time, normally by getting a hard copy.  

PERSONAL DATA

My Data may or may not be “personal information” under European standards in terms of being enough to identify me or even single me out. Data need not have any personal identifiers (name, address..) to be personal information.  

An example of these differences can be found in the treatment of traffic and location data in Europe. There are regulations on these data types (say web history) under the EU E-privacy directive independently of whether this is personal under Data Protection laws. Both legal frameworks - data protection and the regulation of privacy in electronic communications - run in parallel.  

TRANSFORMED DATA

I agree this may introduce complication and we could well agree to drop it. But we should explore the issues behind this before we ditch it.

Pseudonymous data is about to become legally enshrined in EU law as a separate category.

De-identified data may not be personal any longer in the eyes of the law, but here are arguments on how “non-personal” can things like location and browsing histories ever be, despite “anonymisation” efforts.  

How do we deal with these kinds of data?

CONTROL

Part of the spirit of the Working group is that I should be able to control My Data somehow. I think control has to be seen as a separate issue that may overlap with all of the above, but it’s not the same.

In the field of IP you have exploitation rights separate from moral rights. Is this applicable to data? Should I be able to object to my data to be used for nasty purposes such as the development of biological weapons? even if it is anonymised and running on someone else’s infrastructure?

Personally I am a bit sceptic of the individual monetisation approach, preferring a commons perspective, but control is important in any case.

Data protection and privacy laws may help me control My Data in some cases, but you may also need other things: the right infrastructure (VRM, Mydex..) or better contracts with cloud providers.

--  
Javier Ruiz
javier at openrightsgroup.org (mailto:javier at openrightsgroup.org)
+44(0)7877 911 412
@javierruiz
www.OpenRightsGroup.org (http://www.OpenRightsGroup.org)

On Friday, 4 April 2014 at 16:24, Walter van Holst wrote:

> On 04/04/2014 17:12, Antti Jogi Poikola wrote:
> >  
> > Suggestion: My data is a subset of personal data - the term My Data
> > underlines ownership or at least access to my personal data.
> >  
> > In all cases of personal data this ownership question is not clear
> > (i.e. the photo example), but in many cases data subjects should have
> > access / ownership to their personal data in machine readable form and
> > My Data term underlines that cause.
> >  
>  
>  
> I'm sorry. The ownership of data bears zero relevance to your right to
> access to your personal data. The latter is not unqualified in that it
> is not an absolute one, but under the Data Protection Directive you have
> it as a default rule.
>  
> Moreover, it is property rights on data that is an unclear territory in
> law compared to access rights to personal data. Your position only
> underlines that concepts of ownership makes it all murkier, not clearer.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Walter
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>  
>  

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