Page 23 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

LEGAL CHALLENGES FOR DATA-DRIVEN SOCIETY
Liu Duo

President, China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT)

ABSTRACT and its utilization acquiring a more and more prominent
impact and role.
A legal system should bring to society expectations of
stability, and should balance rights and obligations. But the (a) Intensive or instantaneous data interaction becomes a
emergence of revolutionary new technologies can change way of living
and even break the current order and balance. Big data
applied to the everyday life of people is such a technology; it Human society is now producing unprecedented large
is deemed to create a brand new social paradigm bringing amounts of data; modern people are surrounded by a visible
about entirely different perspectives in people’s observations physical environment and an invisible environment of data,
of the world. This poses a challenge to the existing legal with the latter being just a basic state. In everyday life, vast
system, such as how to balance the utilization of big data and amounts of information is produced, stored and exchanged
the security of data resources, and the exploitation of the as data to provide the base and substance for data-based life.
data available and the protection of personal privacy. Other
challenges concern how to determine the ownership of data,
and how to determine the rights and obligations in exchange (b) Data resource becomes an important social resource
of data.
This paper mainly discusses the changes that big data is Considering the huge value to be derived from data, data
bringing to society and the legal challenges that the data- resources are also an important social resource, being present
driven society will be confronted with. It puts forward everywhere and bringing endless innovation. Data will be the
st
suggestions regarding the development and security of big oil of the 21 century, and like other basic resources, data
data industry, protection of personal privacy through the will have specialized producers, users, managers, and
establishment of commercial rules for big data and through regulators. There will be a sector that acquires value from
international coordination mediated by international data production, while the capability to make use of data is a
organizations. kind of core competitiveness for a country, society,
businesses, and individuals.
Keywords – Big data, data-driven society, international
organizations, legal challenges (c) Data quantification becomes a way of thinking

1. SOCIAL CHANGES DRIVEN BY BIG DATA Big data tends to make people think on a quantitative basis
and gives rise to a new way of thinking that focuses on data
and highlights statistics, quantification and relevant logic. As
Big data ushers in a new age and gives rise to a number of a result, people can retrieve, explore and analyze large
social changes, including our way of living and thinking, amounts of data to find out more about complicated social
social relationships, associated rights and obligations, and and natural phenomena, to carry out valuable behavior
social governance needs. Big data changed the form and prediction, trend forecasts and value analysis, and to also
content of data production and information processing, provide the basis for governments, businesses or individuals
which directly changed human life and production. The use to make decisions in a more objective and scientific manner.
of big data has created new rights and expanded the scope of
rights further. Big data has also brought about changes of
public management, which has in turn provided the impetus 1.2. Expansion of rights and obligations in the data-
for related public policy decision making. driven society

1.1. Formation of a data-driven society Data has been produced since the beginning of human
civilization, but it was not in a digitized form until the
invention and application of information technology. Big
Along with the development of mobile Internet, social media data technology enables an unprecedented scale of data
networks, cloud computing, Internet of things and other production, as well as an expanded scope of data utilization,
innovations, human society is entering an age of big data and and big data mining gives a value to data that otherwise
a data-driven society is taking shape, with data production

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