Protección de datos personales en tiempos del big data

·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

A US supermarket chain crossed customer data and could detect pregnancy before the woman herself knew — then sent advertising that revealed the news to her parents.

1. Las Voces del Libro, the editorial podcast of Universidad del Rosario, dedicates this episode to the book Protección de datos personales en tiempos del big data by Saray Barboza Salgado. 2. Host Luna Girón is joined in the studio by co-panelist Diego Garzón and via Zoom by Laura Álvarez; the guest is Saray Barboza Salgado, an attorney and professor of commercial law at Universidad del Rosario. 3. The episode's core question is whether ordinary people understand their fundamental right to personal data protection, and what the Colombian legal framework actually requires of both organisations and the state. 4. Saray defines big data as the processing of large data volumes that satisfies five attributes: volume, velocity, veracity, variety, and value — distinguishing it from conventional business intelligence that has existed since the 1990s. 5. She explains that the video game industry inadvertently drove the hardware development needed for big data by requiring processors capable of handling large simultaneous data loads. 6. Amazon's investment in logistics infrastructure became the foundation of cloud storage services, allowing organisations to rent processing capacity rather than purchase servers. 7. Variety is the key differentiating attribute of big data: the ability to cross structured data (spreadsheets) with unstructured data such as social media posts, images, and video without manual classification. 8. Saray explains the legal distinction between data authorisation and data ownership: under Colombian law, data titulars do not own, hold in custody, or control their data — they only authorise its treatment. 9. This principle is grounded in Article 15 of the Colombian Constitution and Law 1581, which establish the principle of freedom as meaning that data treatment must be based on the titular's authorisation. 10. She notes an important exception: public and judicial entities acting in their official capacity are not subject to the same authorisation requirement. 11. Saray distinguishes between legally public data and data in public access — a person's civil registry is legally public and anyone can request a copy; a public Instagram profile is public access but not legally public, and the titular loses control of the content once posted. 12. She describes always-on device monitoring as a general practice that has already exceeded the reach of formal data protection law, noting that users authorised it at the time of device configuration without awareness. 13. The US case of a supermarket chain that detected a minor's pregnancy through purchase data analysis and sent targeted advertising — revealing the pregnancy to her family — is cited as the landmark case driving US consumer-rights-based privacy enforcement. 14. The United States lacks a single national data protection law; the Federal Trade Commission enforces privacy as a consumer protection issue through the lens of the affected customer, not the data titular. 15. Colombia's data protection regime is modelled aspirationally on the EU's GDPR framework, which treats data protection as a fundamental right and allows member states to negotiate collectively with large data processors. 16. The EU's negotiating leverage was demonstrated when it set conditions on WhatsApp's data-sharing practices with parent company Meta following the acquisition. 17. Colombia's Superintendency of Industry and Commerce issued Circular 2 of 2024 providing instructions on applying data protection principles to AI-based algorithmic profiling, maintaining regulatory relevance without new legislation. 18. The episode has an educational and collegial tone; the three hosts speak conversationally, and Saray navigates between technical legal language and accessible explanation. 19. Listeners with an interest in technology law, data privacy, Colombian legal frameworks, or the practical dimensions of big data for non-specialists will benefit most from this episode. 20. Those expecting policy debate or current news coverage will find the episode is primarily a structured academic introduction to the book's framework and Colombian legal context.

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