Veale, Michael; (2025) Some commonly held but shaky assumptions about data, privacy and power. In: Ioannidou, Maria and Mantzari, D, (eds.) Research Handbook on Data, Privacy and Competition Law. (pp. 17-34). Edward Elgar Publishing

Text Veale 2023 Shaky Assumptions.pdf - Submitted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 14 May 2026. Download (764kB)

Abstract

Data has been seen as central to understanding privacy, informational power, and increasingly, digital-era competition law. Data is not unimportant, but it is misunderstood. I highlight several assumptions in need of challenge. Firstly, that data protection is distinct from privacy and has a broader role in correcting digitally exacerbated power asymmetries. Secondly, contrary to economic received wisdom, data is not fully non-rivalrous due to the infrastructural implications of its integration. Thirdly, data can be less important than the capacity for experimentation and intervention, which is not simple to ‘open up’. Lastly, data is increasingly unimportant due to large firms’ investments in confidential computing technologies, facilitating distributed analysis, learning and even microtargeting. In the right conditions, data can be economically substituted for the ability to orchestrate a protocol – an infrastructural capacity unrecognised sufficiently in competition or other fields. This substitutability also requires the ability to force users to adhere to a protocol, bringing further privacy concerns. In sum, privacy, data protection and power need to be considered more closely entwined than at present, and all fields need to consider the infrastructural dimensions of large platforms, more than focusing on the data they accumulate.

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