Editing Individuation (section)

===In privacy and data protection law===
From around 2016, coinciding with increased government regulation of the collection and handling of personal data, most notably the [[GDPR]] in EU Law, individuation has been used to describe the ‘singling out’ of a person from a crowd – a threat to privacy, autonomy and dignity.<ref name="Individuation - re-thinking the scope of privacy laws">{{cite web |last1=Johnston |first1=Anna |title=Individuation - re-thinking the scope of privacy laws |url=https://www.salingerprivacy.com.au/2016/08/30/individuation/ |website=www.salingerprivacy.com.au |access-date=30 August 2016}}</ref><ref name="Graham">{{cite journal |last1=Greenleaf |first1=Graham |last2=Livingston |first2=Scott |title=China's Personal Information Standard: The Long March to a Privacy Law |journal=Privacy Laws & Business International Report |date=2017 |issue=150 |pages=25–28 |ssrn=3128593 |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3128593 |access-date=4 March 2018}}</ref>    
Most data protection and privacy laws turn on the identifiability of an individual as the threshold criterion for when data subjects will need legal protection. However, privacy advocates argue privacy harms can also arise from the ability to [[disambiguation|disambiguate]] or ‘single out’ a person.  Doing so enables the person, at an individual level, to be tracked, profiled, targeted, contacted, or subject to a decision or action which impacts them - even if their civil or legal ‘identity’ is not known (or knowable).  

In some jurisdictions the wording of the statute already ''includes'' the concept of individuation.<ref>e.g., 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) section 1798.140(o)(1).</ref> In other jurisdictions regulatory guidance has suggested that the concept of 'identification' includes individuation - i.e., the process by which an individual can be 'singled out' or distinguished from all other members of a group.<ref>[https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2007/wp136_en.pdf Article 29 Working Party ‘Opinion 4/2007 on the concept of personal data’ (WP 136, 20 June 2007)]</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-guidance-for-organisations-and-government-agencies/handling-personal-information/what-is-personal-information|title=What is personal information?|date=March 10, 2023|website=OAIC}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2021/50.html|title=Commissioner initiated investigation into 7-Eleven Stores Pty Ltd (Privacy) (Corrigendum dated 12 October 2021) [2021] AICmr 50 (29 September 2021)}}</ref>     

However, where privacy and data protection statutes use only the word ‘identification’ or ‘identifiability’, different court decisions mean that there is not necessarily a consensus about whether the legal concept of identification already encompasses individuation<ref>[https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/google-v-vidal-hall-judgment.pdf Vidal-Hall v Google Inc 2015 -  EWCA Civ 311 at 115]</ref> or not.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=184668&doclang=EN|title=CURIA - Documents|website=curia.europa.eu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title=From knowing by name to targeting: the meaning of identification under the GDPR|first=Nadezhda|last=Purtova|date=June 21, 2022|journal=International Data Privacy Law|volume=12|issue=3|pages=163–183|doi=10.1093/idpl/ipac013|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Rapid advances in technologies including [[artificial intelligence]], and video [[surveillance]] coupled with [[facial recognition systems]] have now altered the digital environment to such an extent that ‘not identifiable by name’ is no longer an effective proxy for ‘will suffer no privacy harm’. Many data protection laws may require redrafting to give adequate protection to privacy interests, by explicitly regulating individuation as well as identification of individual people.<ref name="Individuation2">{{cite journal |last1=Johnston |first1=Anna |title=Individuation: Re-imagining Data Privacy Laws to Protect Against Digital Harms |journal=Brussels Privacy Hub |date=2020 |volume=6 |issue=24 |url=https://brusselsprivacyhub.eu/publications/wp624.html |format=electronic}}</ref>