Big Data in Europe? Reconciling Data Analytics with the new EU Privacy Regulation

The inaugural Law and Emerging Technologies annual lecture will be presented by Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, who will discuss the relationship between Big Data and the EU Privacy Regulation.

Big Data offers the ability to gain valuable insights from the analysis of (personal) data, but it runs counter to the very foundation of data protection and privacy regulation in Europe. The EU is planing to pass a new privacy regulation within the next months that aims to improve privacy protection. Will it thereby kill Big Data?

Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. Earlier he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Professor Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, as well as over a hundred articles (including in Science) and book chapters. His most recent book, the awards-winning 'Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age' (Princeton University Press 2009) has received favorable reviews by academic (Nature, Science, New Scientist) and mainstream media (New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, NPR, BBC, Wired) and has been published in four languages. Ideas proposed in the book have now become official policy, e.g. of the European Union.