Big Data Age Personal Privacy Protection

After 2012, big data application has become one of the most popular research topics, in which researchers from various domains and areas start to examine the relationship with big data and possible application in their disciplines. However, from a jurisprudential viewpoint, big data has made our precarious privacy protect system even more vulnerable. To some extent, privacy invasion in the era of big data can be regarded as an upgrade of those in the information age, where both the scope and degree of damage increases significantly. In order to protect privacy in the era of big data, it is necessary to understand the basic concept of privacy and its change in the age of big data, identify those information which requires protection according to the characteristics of privacy in big data age, and provide specific solutions towards privacy protection.The thesis is organized as followed: In introduction, we summarize previous work related to privacy protection in big data age, including their contributions and limitations. In chapter 2, we introduce the origin and principle of big data and differentiate the confused concepts in privacy research area. After the definition of basic concept, through the privacy conflict in big data era, we introduce and elaborate the challenges faced by privacy protection because of big data application in three aspects, namely the loss of space privacy, the emergence of mass surveillance, and digital personality prejudice. In chapter 3, we discuss the theoretical transformation of privacy rights in big data era, and summarize the changes of privacy rights in big data era through comparison, and identify the rights beside privacy right in big data era. After the definition of privacy right issues and its legal asset, we analyze and compare the legislation and protection conditions overseas and summarize their advantages and disadvantages and worthwhile experiences in chapter 4. In chapter 5, we revisit the history of privacy protection pattern in China, discuss the extant regulations and current legislation condition, and state the limitations of extant model in China by comparing with other countries’ experiences presented in previous chapter. In the last chapter, incorporating with worldwide advanced experiences in privacy protection, we provide specific suggestions in three aspects including the establishment of basic privacy protection rule, the construction of systematic protection, and the enhancement of privacy protection standard in order to provide references to the legislation concerning big data.The main contributions and innovations of this thesis are threefold: we examine the privacy issues in big data era through the privacy conflict viewpoint instead of merely case-listing in previous researches; When analyzing the connotation of privacy right, we identify the change of privacy right in big data era, distinguish its personhood and property, and discuss other related legal asset. In the part of extant legislation discussion, in order to better identify their limitations, we categorize big data application through process instead of department law. In the last chapter, besides providing suggestion of establishment of basic rule and construction of protection system, we provide more specific suggestions based on the deficiency in privacy protection regulations in China.