Paper Example on Big Data Ethics

Introduction

The world is at a stage where technology has evolved to the extent that keeping electronic records has become an issue that requires legislative laws in order for people to keep their information private without breach. After World War II, the right to privacy was recognized as an international human right before it was included in any state constitution. Legal ethics requires that legal representatives keep their information secure and also ensure their client's information is also safe from a breach. Therefore, effective cybersecurity is vital for law firm operation and it's therefore important for lawyers to familiarize themselves with the principles of secure IT. Big companies that also deal with huge amount of data that could be at risk of breach and also have a duty to ensure the client's information is safely guarded. Financial institutions have also an obligation to keep their records and those of their clients away from the breach.

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Issue

The world's principle privacy and data protection issues have once again addressed the challenges of transferring data between the European Union and the United States. From October 2017, more 2500 most institutions had already fulfilled all the requirements set out by the Privacy Shield. The EU held their first annual review regarding operations Privacy Shield and each was expecting the Privacy Shield to still hold its place. The same tribunal that had earlier in the previous rejected the US Safe Harbor Framework would be the one to determine the survival of the Privacy Shield Operation. Besides the judgment of the Privacy Shield.CJEU will deal with the issue of whether standard contractual clauses can effectively be used to transfer data to the United States ( O'Leary, 2018). The issue was referred to CJEU by the High Court of Ireland in another case brought by an Austrian student in his never-ending campaign to prevent any of his social media data from being transferred to the US headquarters of the social media company he prefers to use. Both the Privacy Shield and the Safe Harbor had their concerns taken to the United States and the courts in Ireland would give directions about the contracts to be transferred to the United States. Moreover, if the courts reject those contracts, in principle it could interfere with the passage of individual information between the EU and any country that its data protection could be breached easily. This could result in serious global interference specifically on trade and investments.

Nonetheless, if the court were to invalidate model contracts, in principle it could interfere with the transfers of personal information from the EU to any country whose data protection regime has not yet been deemed adequate. This could see a break on significant amounts of international trade, investments and business.

In addition, if the court's decision does not favour the United States, the EU and the United States would react to a situation where both cannot effectively work together and these could become an issue. These could become a problem for the European Union, since each the countries which it controls, have no capacity in terms of surveillance their countries as compared to that of the United States.

Rule

The new General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect on May 2018, has drawn the attention of business organization both in EU and outside Europe because of its likelihood of imposing tough penalties. The violation could result in a payment of $20 million or 4 percent of global turnover, which is very high. The body that seeks to penalize those in contravention of these regulations, has insisted on companies to first ask individuals whether the collected data and the people will have a right to be victims of online profiling and demand explanation concerning important information that affect them that were on the data system.

There are a lot of obligations imposed by the Data Protection Directive to each country as they implement them into laws that protect their data subjects in relation to the processing of their personal data, it also provides several rights to data subjects in relation to the processing of their personal data. Consequently, countries that fail break these laws are culpable of being fined and also those affected can seek retribution in court. In the United States courts, many cases about data breach are being handled, monetary compensation and adherence action and the office of the attorney general and that of the Federal Trade Commission. A case was brought to court by the FTC concerning a television manufacturer who was facing charges of obtaining viewing data from users of its television without their knowledge.

States have continued to put pressure on privacy and cybersecurity initiatives in order for them to comply. Washington State became the third to pass a legislative that is aimed at regulating biometric data, which deals with the electronic identification and retaining that information and other characteristics that would assist to identify an individual. Moreover, the law excludes physical or photograph video or audio recording; this suggests that the statute will have limited application in regards to facial recognition. The law controls buying and selling, sharing of information about the data and that it's important for data to be protected; it does not provide a private right of action.

In addition, the United States has balanced privacy and data protection as opposed to the EU and other countries. The United States recognizes the rights and interests that for societies to proper in different areas of interest such as economic growth, technological innovation, free speech and human rights, and the values that promote human dignity (Boyd and Crawford 2012). Therefore, counterbalancing privacy protection is the most vital aspect in the United States.

Companies have also an obligation to have a First Amendment right to communicate freely with their clients by exchanging information from both directions, so as to ensure information accuracy and safety (Whitman et al., 2018). In recent times, the courts have been constant disagreement with the plaintiffs in regards to data breach litigation, whether plaintiffs should be compensated where they cannot allege that the criminal actually misused stolen information.

Analysis

Safer storage of information data is very important, cybersecurity attacks, information leak that would put the public safety at risk should be dealt with to avoid issues like terrorism which has become a world problem. Misuse of stolen information would be used by the criminals to mislead the public and these acts could result in mistrust between the public and the government, companies and its employee etc. The federal government has increased its focus on cybersecurity after the government issued an executive order to curb major data breaches and attacks affecting both private and public sector, including election-related hacking, have made cybersecurity risks a subject of even more concern for the America population.

With the establishment of Cybersecurity framework as a way of dealing with companies and understanding their operations is only expected to grow with new regulations coming into place on operating and be able to implement the new regulations in individual owned business and link them with all the networks devices. The courts have remained steadfast in defining and reshaping privacy rights and remedies. The courts have also gone a step ahead to handle cases that are brought forward by the people concerned with regulation and individual parties that aim to safeguard and define privacy and remedies. Foreign organizations could face federal or state regulatory action or private action if the organization satisfies the normal jurisdictional requirement under United States law.

Conclusion

The foreign organization must take into consideration the place where the people they are keeping data for are leaving. States that have already enacted information security regulation have their residence apply as their residence. In the United States, there is no general data localization requirement, although certain requirements do exist for government contractors.

The United States does generally require data localization; it an independent body that would ensure proper use of data. The foreign institutions that should have known that should any law be broken they will be held accountable and charged in accordance with the US laws regardless of who handles the data and whether that individual is outside the United States jurisdiction. In order to avoid breach tougher regulations should be put into place and also curb misuse of stolen data, regulators and law enforcement agencies experts should provide a sufficient and effective way of protecting personal data information, especially the big data information.

References

Whitman, M., Hsiang, C. Y., & Roark, K. (2018, August). The potential for participatory big data ethics and algorithm design: a scoping mapping review. In Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial-Volume 2 (p. 5). ACM.

O'Leary, D. E. (2018). Big Data Privacy, Ethics and Enterprise Continuous Monitoring Systems.

Vayena, E., & Madoff, L. (2018). The ethics of big data in public health. In The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Oxford University Press.

Spector-Bagdady, K., & Jagsi, R. (2018). Big data, ethics, and regulations: Implications for consent in the learning health system. Medical physics, 45(10), e845.

Richards, N. M., & King, J. H. (2014). Big data ethics. Wake Forest L. Rev., 49, 39

Metcalf, J., & Crawford, K. (2016). Where are human subjects in big data research? The emerging ethics divide.

Metcalf, J., & Crawford, K. (2016). Where are human subjects in big data research? The emerging ethics divide.

Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, communication & society, 15(5), 662-679.