ABSTRACT
There is widespread debate over the rights of control that people retain over their personal information. This Article offers several insights that provide clarity to the terms and stakes of this debate. First, it lays out a new normative foundation for the importance of control in data protection regimes, as well as for determining the limits of control that people should retain over their personal data after it is transferred. The central claim is that personal data – as well as other unique cases that this Article identifies – retains a connection to the person even after they no longer control it. The Article analyses of the philosophical concept of separability, which provides conceptual clarity for parsing when and to what degree legal mechanisms should provide control for people over information that describes them. While separable uses do not raise normatively relevant issues of control, when firms use personal data inseparably, they risk violating basic deontological maxims – such as refraining from using a person as a means to an end – which undermine human dignity. As a result, policymakers should craft legal rules that allow individuals to control inseparable uses of their personal data. …
Verstraete, Mark, Inseparable Uses (March 10, 2020). North Carolina Law Review, volume 99, 2021.
First posted 2020-05-14 05:44:57
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