European Union Data Protection Law and Media Expression: Fundamentally Off Balance

Abstract

The European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC requires all European Economic Area (EEA) jurisdictions to provide an equivalent regime protecting the privacy and other fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons in relation to personal data processing, whilst also shielding media expression from the default substantive requirements as necessary to ensure a balance between fundamental rights. Through a comprehensive coding of the derogations set out in each jurisdiction's data protection laws, this article provides the first systematic analysis of whether this has in fact been achieved. It is demonstrated that there is a total lack of even minimal harmonization in this area, with many laws providing for patently unbalanced results especially as regards the publication of sensitive information, which includes criminal convictions and political opinion, and the collection of information without notice direct from the data subject. This reality radically undermines European data protection's twin purposes of ensuring the free flow of personal data and protecting fundamental rights, an outcome which remains largely unaddressed by the proposed new Data Protection Regulation. Practical suggestions are put forward to ameliorate these troubling inconsistencies within the current process of reform.

Analysis of Data Tenure Field and Regulatory Logic in the Internet Era

“…3) RSA public key and private key generation, define the plaintext to be encrypted as M , encrypted ciphertext as C , encrypt the plaintext M to get the ciphertext C , as equation (7):…”

“…Establishing data ownership of the relevant theoretical system is both imperative and effective in the current data environment. Ownership determination is the premise of all data asset transactions smoothly, whether it is to determine the asset status of the data or to ensure that the maximization of data benefits, the prerequisite is to be able to give a clear definition of the rights and interests of the data under the existing conditions [6][7]. However, due to the special attributes of the data that will lead to data on the existence of some subjects, then it is necessary for to legislation be forced to intervene to balance the basic rights and interests of the subjects.…”

Why and how does the regulation of emerging technologies occur? Explaining the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation using the multiple streams framework

“…Critics argued, for example, that member states such as Ireland attracted investment by adopting a lenient approach in implementing the Directive (Kalyanpur & Newman 2019). Further, in a systematic analysis of the implementation of the DPD, Erdos (2015) found “a total lack of even minimal harmonization” within the EU in the case of exemptions permitted under media expression as well. This lack of harmonization – and its compliance cost for businesses – was framed as a problem that necessitated a regulatory change (European Commission 2012a, 2012b).…”