The ICT revolution triggered by the emergence of smart devices, typically represented by the iPhone and the iPad, is migrating into the new domain of ‘big data’ after passing the turning point of ‘SNS Life,’ which is represented by Twitter and FaceBook among others. These developments have brought significant changes in all areas of politics, economy and culture. The stock prices of Apple, Samsung Electronics, FaceBook and Google fluctuate depending on who takes the hegemony in the changes. Meanwhile, such a reform of the ICT sector has generated some new undesirable sideeffects, including online disclosure of personal information, malicious comments, Smishing or other forms of financial scams. As we cannot abandon either big data or privacy protection, it is critical to find a compromise. It seems both evident and selfexplanatory that the use of big data, which is attributable to technical innovation, conflicts with privacy protection based on the idea that individuals should be allowed to determine the disclosure or not of their personal information. Yet, the problem here is that the discussion of countermeasures remains at the level of catching the wind with a net. Therefore, this paper intends to present a framework that can objectively verify what impact the enhanced legal regulation concerning privacy protection has on the use of big data as the first step in exploring a compromise between the use of big data and privacy protection.
Civil Law Protection of Personal Information in the Era of Big Data