International and comparative legal study on Big Data

WRR Working Paper 20 was written as part of the project ‘Big Data, Privacy and Security’, undertaken by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) to investigate the consequences of the use of Big Data in the domain of security.

This background study, entitled International and Comparative Legal Study on Big Data, was written by Bart van der Sloot and Sacha van Schendel. Many countries experiment with Big Data processes, which are almost by definition transnational. The first part of the study is a quick scan of the Big Data policies, legislation and regulations in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, South-Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. The second part presents the findings of a survey among Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) in Europe. Both parts of the study focus on the relations between Big Data, security and privacy.

LLM. MPhil Bart van der Sloot is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam. During 2014 and 2015, he participated in the ‘Big Data, Privacy and Security’ project of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. Sacha van Schendel (LLS), a Master’s student of Law & Technology at Tilburg University, worked as a trainee in this project.

Responsibility for the information and views set out in this study lies entirely with the authors.