Regulatory mechanisms for protecting reasonable expectations of privacy: the roles of consent and fairness in Australian and Indian Data Protection Law

This project is a collaboration between Melbourne Law School and Jindal Global University, India. The project seeks to build pathways for legal innovation in India to support and inform law reform in Australia and other comparable jurisdictions, and also for reciprocal interactions.

The data collection practices of digital platforms are of increasing concern to governments and regulators across the world. Indiscriminate data collection practices are a threat to individual privacy and autonomy. But conversely, the use of large data pools holds potential for government and private sector services to be provided in a more efficient and effective manner. Both India and Australia are in the process of reforming their data protection law to address these and other concerns. This project will explore approaches to balancing the elements of individual consent and fairness to protect citizens reasonable expectations of privacy in data driven transactions.

The project will:

• Conduct a series of round table events with policy makers, regulators and scholars in the India and Australia, as well potentially as Singapore and the UK, with a focus on the key concepts in designing data protection regimes to protect reasonable expectations of data privacy;
• Survey regulator attitudes to protecting reasonable expectations and the role of consent and fairness measures in this task;
• Produce a series of short white papers for policy makers on these issues;
• Write a joint publication in a leading law journal;
• Investigate funding options for a larger project.

This project is a collaboration with Professor Indranath Gupta from Jindal Global University.

CAIDE Researchers