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臺大管理論叢
第
27
卷第
2S
期
111
Personal Information Protection Act and the Legal Risk of Big
Data Applications in Taiwan
Summary
In spite of their underlying values, big data application now presents a unique challenge
to the world of practice and research alike. This is because the talk of privacy and personality
rights has become an increasing focus of governments and international organizations,
resulting in successive pieces of legislation that expand their jurisdictional turf to include
both privacy and personality rights. Thereby, the utilization of big data, i.e., their collection,
processing and application, are potentially susceptible to the legal risks of impinging on both
rights.
A glance over a series of important countries across the world would reveal the fact that
there is a split of opinion between jurisdictions with common law systems and those with
civil law systems on the issue of personal information protection. Free flow of personal
information is apt to gain more support in countries with common law systems where
efficient ideas are gaining ground, allowing for such regulations to be promulgated, which
can contribute to the staggering development of big data analysis among these countries.
But such opinion does not carry over to civil law systems where the deep-seated respect for
personal information protection persists and drives the governments’ regulatory zeal. Taiwan,
which also falls into this category, frames this question in a similar vein and thereby
encounters snags in wide application of big data analysis.
To date, however, those policy recipes with privacy protection occupying the central
place have brought the governments an awkward position, as they might fall behind the pace
of scientific and social development, which is currently the case in Taiwan. The whole
society have undergone significant changes in the past decades, not only in relation to
changes promoted by the advent of concepts associated with big data, but also in relation to
the changes stemming from the exponential rise in the adoption of big data collection and
processing technologies within the business circles. Regrettably, those legal perspectives
with their predominant focus on such high-profile issue as privacy right protection appear in
many cases too antithetical to big data applications and have increasingly been recognized as
Jin-Lung Peng
, Associate Professor, Department of Risk Management and Insurance, National Chengchi
University
Yu-Pei Chen
, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University
Aureola Sun
, Ph.D. Student, Department of Risk Management and Insurance, National Chengchi
University