European Privacy by Design

Three competing forces are shaping the concept of European Privacy by Design (PbD): laws and regulations, business goals and architecture designs. These forces carry their own influence in terms of ethics, economics, and technology. In this research we undertook the journey to understand the concept of European PbD. We examined its nature, application, and enforcement. We concluded that the European PbD is under-researched in two aspects: at organizational level (compared to the individual level); and mainly in the way it is enforced by authorities. We had high hopes especially with regards to the latter, and eager to bring significant scientific contribution on this field. We were interested to learn if data protection authorities are having such impacts looking at European PbD, that can pioneer new approaches to privacy preservation. This is why we elaborated on possible ways to measure their activity, in a manner that both legal and non-legal experts can understand our work. We promised a response to the research question can the enforcement of European PbD be measured and if yes, what are possible ways to do so? We conducted data analytics on quantitative and qualitative data to answer this question the best way possible. Our response is a moderate yes, the enforcement of PbD can be measured. Although, at this point, we need to settle with only good-enough ways of measure and not dwell into choosing the most optimal or best ways. One reason for this is that enforcement of PbD cases are highly customized and specific to their own circumstances. We have shown this while creating models to predict the amount of administrative fines for infringement of GDPR. Clustering these cases was a daunting task. Second reason for not delivering what could be the best way of measure is lack of data availability in Europe. This problem has its roots in the philosophical stance that the European legislator is taking on the topic of data collection within the EU. Lawmakers in Europe certainly dislike programs that collect ...