The control over personal data: True remedy or fairy tale ?

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the concept of 'control' over personal data, analyzing its legal and technical meanings, and questions whether current policies truly empower individuals or merely offer rhetorical reassurance.

Contribution

It provides an interdisciplinary analysis of 'control' in law and computer science, clarifying its meaning and implications for data subjects' agency amidst socio-technical complexities.

Findings

The meaning of 'control' over data remains vague and under-studied.

Current policies often use 'control' rhetorically without clear implementation.

A refined understanding of 'control' can better inform legal and technical frameworks.

Abstract

This research report undertakes an interdisciplinary review of the concept of "control" (i.e. the idea that people should have greater "control" over their data), proposing an analysis of this con-cept in the field of law and computer science. Despite the omnipresence of the notion of control in the EU policy documents, scholarly literature and in the press, the very meaning of this concept remains surprisingly vague and under-studied in the face of contemporary socio-technical environments and practices. Beyond the current fashionable rhetoric of empowerment of the data subject, this report attempts to reorient the scholarly debates towards a more comprehensive and refined understanding of the concept of control by questioning its legal and technical implications on data subject\^as agency.