A comparative legal study on privacy and data protection issues associated with automatic data collection in the EU, the U.S. and Japan.

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16H07246
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: New fields of law
• Research Institution: Nihon University
• Principal Investigator: KOMUKAI Taro 日本大学, 危機管理学部, 教授 (30780316)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-08-26 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 個人情報保護 / プライバシー / IoT / ビッグデータ / M2M

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Internet of Things (IoT) and big data technologies generate a variety of new products and services from the automatic collection and analysis of personal data. While the innovation gives us a huge benefit, it also could be a curse to serious privacy concerns because such data could be collected and used while the data subject does not recognize it. It could be difficult to get efficient consent for one or more specific purposes from data subject under these new technologies.
This study focuses on the privacy and data protection issues caused by automatic collection of personal data, and shows that whereas the main issue in the EU and the U.S. is how to reflect the will of data subjects in processing personal data, Japanese law does not require such reflection, so there is no premise for such discussion. And it leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to consider some legal schemes for reflecting the will of data subjects in Japan, too.

Free Research Field

情報法