Use of Big Data to Predict Human Behaviour Demands Regulation

Privacy and data protection legislation worldwide is ill-equipped to deal with the Big Data revolution, according to Professor Maeve McDonagh from UCC's School of Law."Big Data is now being used to predict individual behaviour and its use for this purpose can result in decisions being made about people based on that analysis, which limits their autonomy and potentially opens them to discrimination. Predictions can be made not only in the commercial world of online selling and advertising but also by government agencies, including law enforcement agencies".Big Data, which involves applying sophisticated data analysis tools to huge sets of data gathered from diverse sources - from social networks to apps, establishes correlations, some of which are unexpected. Predictive policing is now used in some of the largest police departments in the U.S. The LAPD, for example, uses Big Data analysis to decide where to position officers.While the proposed new European General Data Protection Regulation contains some innovative provisions, it is based on a traditional model that does not take appropriate account of developments in Big Data, Professor McDonagh believes. "It focuses primarily on requirements of notice and consent. The notice requirement means that people must be informed at the time they supply their personal data of all the uses it will be put to. This is impractical in the Big Data context because the collectors may not reveal or even be aware of those downstream uses".There are many beneficial uses of big data, such as predicting the spread of disease, comments McDonagh, but its use to predict human behaviour demands careful regulation, particularly in context such as law enforcement and government surveillance. "The processing of Big Data can have negative implications for the enjoyment of the right to privacy which is protected by all the major human rights conventions. We need to revisit our privacy and data protection legislation to ensure that it meets the standards demanded by our human rights law obligations".Professor McDonagh, UCC President Dr Michael Murphy and Professor Barry Murphy, Director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at UCC delivered talks last week on George Boole, data analytics and sustainable development.