Protection of personal data in the age of surveillance capitalism

One of the unique features of the capitalist economy is that it can turn literally anything into a source of profit. The invention of the Internet, with all the technologies that have arisen in connection with it, from it and in the name of it, has led to the emergence of a digital economy that effectively monetized personal data and made it the most valuable source of capital gains. In the post-industrial 21st century, a number of researchers began to call personal data “the new oil”. However, in the 21st century, the post-industrial society has managed to make another round of development, and the expression “data is the new oil” has become the subject of criticism of experts in the field of privacy and personal data protection. The article contains a deep analysis of the place of the institution of personal data in modern society of surveillance capitalism, both from a legal and social perspectives, and also formulates the authors’ approach to the potential of one of the most conceptually effective tools for managing personal data — the subject’s consent to personal data processing. The focus of the study is the institution of personal data in the era of surveillance capitalism in the applied, empirical and theoretical planes, and the goal is to determine a uniform approach to the place and role of this institution, taking into account the characteristics of surveillance capitalism and the decisions of international, regional (for instance, European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice of the European Union) and national judicial authorities. Given the growing importance that the institution of personal data is gaining in legal theory and practice, this article contains elements of both empirical and theoretical nature, with the expected predominance of the former. The methodological basis of the research includes logical, formal legal and grammatical methods, as well as comparative legal and functional approaches. The latter contributes to the development of a sustainable practice-oriented approach to understanding of the place and role of the legal institution of personal data, based on the de facto functioning of this institution in general and its interaction with the ideology of surveillance capitalism in particular.