Privacy and Data Protection Challenges in the Distributed Era

Book excerpt: This book examines the conflicts arising from the implementation of privacy principles enshrined in the GDPR, and most particularly of the ``Right to be Forgotten'', on a wide range of contemporary organizational processes, business practices, and emerging computing platforms and decentralized technologies. Among others, we study two ground-breaking innovations of our distributed era: the ubiquitous mobile computing and the decentralized p2p networks such as the blockchain and the IPFS, and we explore their risks to privacy in relation to the principles stipulated by the GDPR. In that context, we identify major inconsistencies between these state-of-the-art technologies with the GDPR and we propose efficient solutions to mitigate their conflicts while safeguarding the privacy and data protection rights. Last but not least, we analyse the security and privacy challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic during which digital technologies are extensively utilized to surveil people’s lives.