Some employers use people analytics to systematically evaluate their human capital in order to increase the value of the company. In doing so, they face data protection and employment law challenges. For example, they must apply the law in a risk-oriented manner; furthermore, consent constitutes a fragile legal basis for data processing in an employment context. Legal practitioners, HR and IT managers will not only find answers to their questions on the topic but also empirical data from a cross-industry study. On an overarching level, this dissertation argues for a professionalisation and democratisation of data protection law in order to achieve better law enforcement in practice. The cutting-edge and internationally oriented work takes into account the fully revised Swiss Data Protection Act, the modernised Convention 108+, the EU General Data Protection Regulation and certain aspects of US data protection law.

The complete work is available here as a free download (in German).

Data ownership may currently be the proposal receiving the most significant attention in the mainstream conversation about privacy. This article, Beyond Data Ownership, shows that property alone is self-defeating as a privacy measure. Our digital environments are marked by substantial power imbalances between data processors and data subjects. Data ownership proposals will not alter these realities. It shows that data ownership not only may be aiming to achieve the wrong thing but, moreover, fails to achieve its goal: control over personal information.
The normative implications of the article’s finding go beyond debunking the popular data ownership initiative. The article operationalises how to remedy the problems of property rules through two current policy discussions in privacy regulation: purpose limitation and right to a remedy. It suggests how legislators and courts could, in concrete terms, reform these two areas to optimise privacy protection.