Autonomy or Heteronomy – Proposal for a Two-Tier Interpretation of Art 6 GDPR

Currently, there is an almost ideological conflict between proponents and opponents of rigid data protection. One side emphasizes that privacy is rooted in human dignity and is therefore sacrosanct. The other side, principally enterprises, search for correlations in huge sets of data thus exploiting the semantic level of personal data to increase knowledge. The business models of powerful platforms and the current legal framework illustrates this conflict between economic reality and the legal framework. This article suggests an interpretation of Art. 6 GDPR that reconciles economic reality with the European law on privacy.