Europeans face a regulatory challenge: how can the human rights and dignitary values that animate data protection law be protected in transborder data flows? With the proposal of the EU-US Privacy Shield, part of the challenge will be answered by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is...

This short essay, prepared for the Future of Privacy Forum's Big Data and Privacy: Making Ends Meet event in September 2013, makes two observations concerning "big data." First, big data is not new. Consumer reporting, a field where information about individuals is aggregated and used to assess...