Synthetic data and data protection laws

Giuseppe D'Acquisto
Additional contact information
Giuseppe D'Acquisto: Senior Technology Adviser, Garante per la protezione dei dati personali

Journal of Data Protection & Privacy, 2024, vol. 6, issue 3, 227-239

Abstract: While synthetic data has the potential to address privacy concerns associated with real-world data in many scenarios — ranging from health applications to machine learning — organisations must proceed carefully to ensure they do not inadvertently violate the General Data Protection Regulation or other data protection laws. The boundaries between the processing of personal and anonymised data are sometimes overlooked, creating potential risks for individuals' rights and freedoms. This paper will start from a definition of synthetic data and, after reviewing some foreseeable use cases (also promoted by forthcoming sector legislations in the areas of artificial intelligence and data sharing), it will address the conditions set out in data protection laws (the EU General Data Protection Regulation in primis) in order to consider a set of data as properly anonymised, as well as the phases of synthetic data generation and use where personal data might still be processed, proposing some reflections towards genuine legal compliance.

Keywords: synthetic data; privacy enhancing technologies; data protection compliance; anonymisation; identification risks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/8407/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/8407/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jdpp00:y:2024:v:6:i:3:p:227-239

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Data Protection & Privacy from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().