Data Protection Law and the Ethical Use of Analytics, PRIVACY AND SECURITY LAW REPORT, 10 PVLR 70

I. Analytics: An Introduction O rganizations now work in a data-rich environment. As the Article 29 Working Group of the EU recently noted, ‘‘[W]e are witnessing a so-called ‘data deluge’ effect, where the amount of personal data that exists, is processed and is further transferred continues to grow.’’ From all indications, the data deluge will not only continue, but increase. In 2003, a study at the UC Berkeley School of Information found that the amount of new information being created every year and stored on media was 5 exabytes. That amount is equal to the information stored in 37,000 libraries the size of the Library of Congress in the United States. By 2007, however, the amount of information stored each year had increased to 161 exabytes a year. This development has continued apace. In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that mankind now creates as much information every two days as it had from the dawn of civilization to 2003. The turn to analytics is a response to this situation. Analytics involve the use of statistics, algorithms, and other tools of mathematics, harnessed through information technology, to use data to improve decisionmaking. A wide variety of organizations use analytics in their operations. Analytics are used by government, for example, but this white paper concentrates on how private-sector organizations use this technique. It does