Privacy & Standardisation Capstone

Welcome to the capstone on the specialisation on Privacy & Standardisation. This capstone will build on the knowledge you obtained in the courses: Standardisation & Technology, Privacy in the Western World, Privacy in the USA and Privacy in Europe. The capstone will help you build a comprehensive opinion and it will challenge you in all areas of present-day privacy protection. The assignments invite you to use and revisit the material of all the courses. This capstone will link historic milestones to current limitations and offer you a journey through jurisdictions and technological fields alike.

Whereas in the previous courses you were assessed by quizzes, the capstone will require you to carefully consider all you have learned so far and detail your opinion. The assesment in this course will mainly be done by in-depth assignments. Use the few practice exercises well to give you a head start in the graded assignments!

Before diving into the legal elements of privacy and data protection it is important to recognize the structure of legal documents and relevance of passages. First, we encourage you to scan through the text and ensure you know what the different recitals and articles encompass. Remember in which articles specific information can be found. The following instruction and exercises will help you to find specific information and give you tools to study the reasoning in legal documents often hidden in plain sight.

Different companies value your privacy differently and for some companies your personal data has even become (the most important) part of their business model. And while you have probably encountered plenty of cookies and terms of services while navigating the web. All companies, also online, should oblige to the rule of law. These laws are designed to protect individuals and originate from basic (constitutional) rights and freedoms - see also the MOOC privacy in the Western World. We revisit the origin of our most important freedoms and use these for comparison in the modern-day field of privacy and data protection.

Special kind of data require special kind of attention. In both the USA and Europe regulations for processing personal medical data are very strict. We will challenge you to find the differences between both jurisdictions and determine the strictness of their regulations. The courses Privacy in the USA and Privacy in Europe provide background to the historic, societal and legal differences. Whereas many differences are present, pseudonymisation is key to protection of medical data in both regions. The International Standardisation Organisation provides a standard to do this. How is this intertwined with the obligations imposed by the healthcare regulations? Revisit the course Standardisation & Technology.