EDPS Ethics Advisory Group 2018 Report - Towards a Digital Ethics

The European Data Protection Supervisor’s Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) has carried out its work against the backdrop of two significant social-political moments: a growing interest in ethical issues, both in the public and in the private spheres and the imminent entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.

The EDPS Opinion ‘Toward a new digital ethics‘ (2015) grounds the ‘new digital ethics’ in the fundamental right to privacy and the protection of personal data, understanding both as crucial for the protection of human dignity. The Opinion cites dignity—the bedrock of the European Union Charter of Fundamentals Rights—as the signpost for the new digital ethics. It highlights the interdependence of technology and human values, stressing that, while technological evolution is informed by human values, those same values do not remain untouched by technologies.

The EDPS Opinion identifies several technological trends that require a rethinking of the relation between technology and human values, thus calling for the formulation of a ‘new digital ethics’: big data generated from a variety of sources, from public administrations and private companies, social networks and other online platforms, the internet of things and networked sensors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, in particular machine learning. These digital technologies require what the Opinion calls a ‘big data protection ecosystem’: an interactive and accountable assemblage of ‘future-oriented regulation’, ‘accountable controllers’, ‘privacy-conscious engineering’, and ‘empowered individuals’.

This report aims to provide a preliminary account of the socio-cultural shifts that have taken place in concert with these technological trends, and to examine how European values may be understood as part of the new data protection ecosystem.

This report seeks to propose terms and concepts that contribute to a constructive debate about the future of ethics in a full-fledged digital society. It identifies and clarifies some of the ethical questions that emerge in the application of data protection regulations to the new forms of data collection and processing and to the new economy that has rapidly formed around it.

The work of the Ethics Advisory Group has been carried out in anticipation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will become fully applicable on 25 May 2018. The GDPR supersedes the 1995 Data Protection Directive, and strengthens and harmonises the protection of personal data within the European Union. It also expands the territorial scope of the EU data protection regime, by bringing a large number of overseas businesses and other organisations within its reach.

The full report can be reviewed at: