Data Protection Law

Course goals

After this course

• The students can understand and explain the rationales, socio-technical context, key concepts, actors and rules of the GDPR and selected provisions of other EU digital law with data protection relevance and their interaction with digital technology;
• The students can assess instances of use of digital technologies, data practices and compliance and enforcement on the matter of applicability of, consistency with and allocation of responsibilities under data protection law and, where relevant, selected provisions of primary EU law;
• The students can formulate a substantiated position about developments, regulatory choices and solutions for legal issues that are topical in practice in the areas of EU data protection- and other digital law with data protection relevance, including substantive provisions and enforcement, taking into account their socio-technical context, relevant law, doctrine and academic literature;
• The students can communicate in English knowledge, ideas, solutions and conclusions, as well as the arguments, motives and considerations underlying them in an understandable, structured, correct and convincing manner.

Content

Content (English)

(Personal) data generation and analysis have become an inseparable part of private lives, social interactions and processes across business-, government and non-profit sectors alike. A legal professional should be able to navigate and take a critical stance on the laws governing (personal) data, where the EU General Data Protection Regulation plays a central role.
Data and data-related technologies shape modern societies and present well-known and new societal challenges, such as invasion of privacy, dignity and autonomy, as well as the challenges of highly controversial practices of algorithmic governance and risk prediction. This course examines the societal challenges linked to the generation and use of data and how the law addresses those challenges.
Data is crucial for developing new technologies such as AI and is considered an essential resource to fuel the digital economy and to enable research and production of new knowledge. Companies and governments alike use data to do good, e.g. save costs, improve the quality of public and private services and offer new products, but sometimes to manipulate, dominate, and control. Control over data and data technologies is necessary for the protection of fundamental rights such as privacy, human dignity and non-discrimination, and other individual and societal interests.
How to enable the data-driven social good and limit the data-related wrongs is a moving target and a top priority on the European and global regulatory agendas, in board- and courtrooms..
The course will give you a solid understanding of the core of EU data protection law and and make links to selected provisions of other EU digital laws on issues like data reuse, transparency of algorithmic decision-making and others. These legal areas are extremely dynamic, ridden with uncertainty, and constantly evolve through regulation and litigation. For this reason, the teaching is focused on the themes and problems that emerge at the intersection of data-related developments on the one hand and those legal domains on the other and is not limited to the content of the legal provisions and their application.
While the exact themes covered in the course may change due to the dynamic nature of the relevant law, the following list may serve as an indication of the course content:

•         Theoretical and normative foundations of data protection law;
•         Identification and anonymity;
•         Responsibility for data protection in a complex architecture of production and provision of IT products and services;
•         Online tracking;
•         Profiling and algorithmic decision-making;
•         Access to and reuse of data;
•         Challenges of enforcement of data protection law.
 

• Compulsory course in the master Law and Technology in Europe