Smart contracts and smart disclosure: Coding a GDPR compliance framework

Abstract

This chapter analyses some of the main legal requirements laid down in the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with regard to hybrid Cloud Computing transformations. The GDPR imposes several restrictions on the storing, accessing, processing and transferring of personal data. This has generated some concerns with regard to its practicability and flexibility given the dynamic nature of the Internet. The current architecture and technical features of the Cloud do not allow adequate control for end-users. Therefore, in order for the Cloud adopters to be legally compliant, the design of Cloud Computing architectures should include additional automated capabilities and certain nudging techniques to promote better choices. This chapter explains how to fine tune and effectively embed these legal requirements at the earlier stages of the architectural design of the computer code. This automated process focuses on Smart Contracts and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) frameworks, which include selection tools that take an information schema and a pseudo-code that follows a programming logic to process information based on that schema. The pseudo-code is essentially the easiest way to write and design computer code, which can check automatically the legal compliance of the contractual framework. It contains a set of legal questions that have been specifically designed to urge Cloud providers to disclose relevant information and comply with the legal requirements established by the GDPR.