The outcome of approving the GDPR, as well as the recent changes in data privacy, has led to set a standard of ethics in data protection. The GDPR is something likened to the known prototype of universal standards in data protection. In order for data protection to become more widely accepted and complete, a major number of developed countries would need to come to an agreement on what would be acceptable data protection laws in addition how terms such as personal data are defined. In doing so, data protection can become more unanimous and overcome slight differences in perspectives and methodology among different countries.
In another arena, the political arena, the ethics of data protection has reached a new level of political significance, “News broke early this year that a data analytics firm once employed by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly gained access to personal data from millions of user profiles” (Pioneer, 2018). The ethical concern here is not only improper access, but also the misuse of information. This event has revealed the moral gray areas of how data can be accessed or used. The group that carried out this strategy also misused data by employing “fake news” campaigns as well as advertising and driving misinformation to the public in order to steer the direction of a political outcome.
