• Collectively Exercizing the Right of Access: Individual Effort Societal Effect

    Author(s):
    Hadi Asghari, René Louis Pierre Mahieu (see profile) , Michel van Eeten
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    Cultural Studies
    Subject(s):
    Privacy
    Item Type:
    Conference paper
    Conf. Title:
    2017 GigaNet Annual Symposium
    Conf. Loc.:
    Geneva
    Conf. Date:
    December 17th 2017
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6TR86
    Abstract:
    The debate about how to govern personal data has intensified in recent years. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into effect in 2018, relies on transparency mechanisms codified through obligations for organizations and citizen rights. While some of these rights have existed for decades, their effectiveness is rarely tested in practice. This paper reports on the exercise of the so-called right of access, which gives citizens the right to get access to their personal data. We study this by working with participants—citizens for whom the law is written—who collectively sent over a hundred data access requests and shared the responses with us. We analyze the replies to the access requests, as well as the participant's evaluation of them. We find that non-compliance with the law's obligations is widespread. Participants were critical of many responses, though they also reported a large variation in quality. They did not find them effective for getting transparency into the processing of their own personal data. We did find a way forward emerging from their responses, namely by looking at the requests as a collective endeavor, rather than an individual one. Comparing the responses to similar access requests creates a context to judge the quality of a reply and the lawfulness of the data practices it reveals. Moreover, collective use of the right of access can help shift the power imbalance between individual citizens and organizations in favor of the citizen, which may incentivize organizations to deal with data in a more transparent way.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf giganet-collectively-exercizing-the-right-of-access-individual-effort-societal-effect.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 221

    Back to Deposits