Our panel proposes new perspectives on data protection, taking the paradigmatic GDPR as a starting point, yet moving beyond its provisions. To find a hopeful future for data protection, we look at its past, non-individualistic perspectives on the law and non-Western practices of the present. The panel will lay out how to expand our understanding of data protection to counter current harmful data practices. These practices include the concentration of informational power in the hands of a few, the exploitation of data subjects and the domination of socially marginalized persons. We will further consider the socio-economic legal and informal structures that enable such practices and outcomes and focus on the following questions:
• How is the data subject formed by and navigates through structures of power and competing informational norms?
• How should data-based discrimination be governed?
• How do data laws distribute power?
• How can we protect communities and society as a whole from adverse effects of data practices?
