Pursuing consumer empowerment in the age of big data: A comprehensive regulatory framework for data brokers

Data brokers play a central role in the big data ecosystem, compiling personal data from numerous sources and subsequently selling them to businesses worldwide. Such practices, however, generally occur clandestinely without consumers' knowledge or consent and can harm consumers in a discriminatory manner. In recent years, US policymakers have been urged to regulate data brokers by promoting individual choice but have failed, whereas the European Union has introduced broad data privacy guarantees for consumers and a data protection regime that limits data brokers' activities if consumers' consent has not been obtained for specific purposes. Because of the power imbalance between consumers and data brokers, the author argues that the European Union's coherent data protection framework serves as an effective model for regulating data brokers.