Data ' The New Gold

• Published date: 05 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Privacy, Data Protection
• Law Firm: Ashok Dhingra Associates
• Author: Mr Ashok Dhingra

Ashok Dhingra¹

Data is the new gold and future wars are going to be fought for this precious commodity, not in trenches or air but with computers from the confines of airconditioned offices.

I don't know whether my above prophecy will ultimately come true or not but today it seems likely. Before we go for a deeper dive in the issue, let us understand what is data.

Data in layman's language is collection of numbers, facts, observations, patterns, etc., and is collected for analysis. Data plays an important role in society and can be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Data readable or processed by humans is called unstructured data and machine-readable data is called structured data. Structured data can be processed by machines or computers and different software, which include machine learning, automation, artificial intelligence, etc. Data privacy laws are concerned with unstructured data and management and protection thereof.

Another important kind of data in terms of digital data is 'Big Data'. There is no set threshold or criteria which would qualify data as Big Data. Accordingly to Gartner's Glossary - Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/ or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation.

The importance of data.

With the growth and cost optimisation of internet in the last few years, internet is more accessible and its penetration has increased rapidly in the society, leading to generation of unprecedented volumes of data. Coupled with development of technology, collection and processing of data of personal preferences, shopping habits, sexual orientation, etc. have given new tools in the hands of marketeers. Similarly, demographic data - peoples age, gender, income, religion, etc. - is very useful tool for both marketing companies and pollical parties for targeted campaigning and influencing election results. There is no end to use and importance of data and everyday new usages of data are being discovered everyday leading to mad scramble for collecting and making money out of data.

With banking and economy going online and every aspect of life connected digitally, globally governments started making laws in the last 7 - 8 years around data protection and validation on one hand and on the other activist rights group being conscious of power of data, started war on entities having access to large pool of data...