Restoring Legal Certainty in EU Data Protection Law
The final DigiData report on contextual identifiability, anonymisation assurance, scientific research, AI development and supervisory governance in the Digital Omnibus.
Research
Public research, evidence and tools for digital regulation.
DigiData’s research section brings together public reports, books, regulatory submissions and external research infrastructure. Browse the latest featured work, the research archive and the Deceptive Design Enforcement Database.
Featured research
Current research and public contributions.
Recent reports and expert contributions on data protection, digital fairness and regulatory policy.
Dark Patterns Are Only the Surface
Slides, prepared remarks and a companion lecture from the European Economic and Social Committee hearing on the Digital Fairness Act, commercial practices and the evidence needed for enforcement.
Featured research resource
Deceptive Design Enforcement Database
A searchable record of regulatory action and litigation concerning deceptive patterns in digital services.
The database supports comparative analysis of how consumer protection, data protection, competition and related legal regimes respond to manipulative interface and system design. It brings together enforcement materials across jurisdictions and organises them according to the deceptive practices identified in each action.
The enforcement materials draw on the Leiser, Santos and Doshi Database, providing a practical evidence base for researchers, regulators, practitioners and organisations assessing the legal treatment of deceptive design. The resource is hosted by deceptive.design and opens as an external site.
Research archive
Reports and submissions built for scrutiny.
The complete public collection includes commissioned studies, submissions, policy papers and earlier academic reports. Work also records the engagements and research projects behind these publications.
Dark Patterns Are Only the Surface
Slides, prepared remarks and a companion lecture from the European Economic and Social Committee hearing on the Digital Fairness Act, commercial practices and the evidence needed for enforcement.
Europe Will Not Build a PET Market on Legal Ambiguity
The Digital Omnibus, contextual identifiability and a reliable assurance route for privacy enhancing technologies.
PublishedReport for the European Commission on Article 5(1)(a) and (b) of the AI Act
A comprehensive analysis of subliminal, purposefully manipulative, deceptive and vulnerability-exploitative AI practices, including constitutive elements, enforcement challenges, use cases and interaction with the wider EU digital acquis.
PublishedAnalysis of Deceptive Design Techniques in Online Services Popular Among Children
A 155-page analysis of manipulative interfaces and system architecture, personalised influence, gamification, children’s vulnerabilities and the adequacy of the GDPR, DSA, UCPD and AI Act.
PublishedMaking Access to Google Search Data Work Without Inventing a Privacy Fiction
A submission on Article 6(11) DMA that preserves anonymisation as the legal condition for sharing personal search data, proposes tiered access modalities and introduces the AUIA.
PublishedThe Innovation Mandate
A proposal for a binding duty of evidence and public reason-giving when digital regulators choose among materially different lawful routes affecting rights, legal certainty, investment and scale.
PublishedFrom Individual Rights to Industrial Litigation
An analysis of collective redress, Article 82 GDPR, procedural fragmentation, forum selection, automation and the need to keep harm, procedure and remedy tightly coupled.
PublishedConsumer Interest and AI, Phase 1 Response: Consumer Attitudes, Risk Tolerance and Expectations
A proportionate, architecture-aware account of consumer AI risk. It argues against placing the primary burden on consumers, treats vulnerability as relational and distinguishes beneficial assistance from exploitative optimisation.
PublishedConsumer Interest and AI, Phase 2 Response: A Consumer AI Accountability Framework
An operational framework for adaptive and agentic consumer services, combining a five-tier functional risk ladder with mandates, action receipts, prohibited optimisation objectives, vulnerability-event controls, rights-friction parity, evidence packs, redress by design and earned safe harbours.
PublishedNon-Personal Data Is Not One Thing
A cross-acquis taxonomy that separates legal status from route, scope, artefact form, circulation and assurance instead of treating non-personal data as one coherent object.
PublishedFrom Sticker to Passport: TRACE and the AUIA
A documentation stack in which the legal baseline, complete assessment dossier and portable data-status claim remain separate, reviewable and time-bounded.
PublishedRecalibrating the EDPB and the EDPS Under a Duty to Cooperate
An institutional case for cooperative digital administration, clearer responsibility, procedural discipline, auditable separation and an enforceable duty of inter-regulatory cooperation.
PublishedProportionality
A reconstruction of proportionality as a discipline of justified interference and rights-sensitive technological architecture across EU law, the GDPR and the AI Act.
PublishedThe Addiction Panic Is a Poor Basis for Children’s Rights
A rights-based critique of addiction-centred policy narratives and a case for evidence-led, function-specific regulation of manipulation, exploitation and genuine harm.
PublishedOutcome Report of 1st Expert Workshop on EU Proposed Regulation on Preventing and Combatting Child Sexual Abuse
A multidisciplinary analysis of the EU proposal on online child sexual abuse, addressing general monitoring, proportionality, private communications, adolescent sexual exploration, voluntary detection and institutional safeguards.
PublishedOutcome Report of 2nd Expert Workshop on EU Proposed Regulation on Preventing and Combatting Online Child Sexual Abuse
A technology-focused assessment of detection tools and end-to-end encryption under the EU proposal, covering hashing, image and text classifiers, on-device techniques, secure enclaves, repurposing risks and legal safeguards.
PublishedVirtual Currencies, Real Harms
An earlier policy report on consumer and regulatory harms associated with virtual currencies and the need for legal certainty in technically complex markets.
Restoring Legal Certainty in EU Data Protection Law
The final DigiData report on contextual identifiability, anonymisation assurance, scientific research, AI development and supervisory governance in the Digital Omnibus.
Books
Major research projects in book form.
Publisher pages provide the authoritative bibliographic and purchasing records.
Dark Patterns, Deceptive Design, and the Law
AI’s Hidden Influence on Our Digital Experience
A full-spectrum account of manipulation from visible interface tactics to personalised system architecture and AI-powered influence.
View publisher page
Critical Reflections on the EU’s Data Protection Regime
A multi-author assessment of the GDPR’s institutions, doctrine and enforcement
A critical examination of the GDPR’s legal architecture, enforcement practice and wider political and institutional consequences.
View publisher page
Artificial Intelligence, Neurodata, and Society
Law at the Edge of Cognition
An examination of NeuroAI, predictive cognition, mental privacy and the legal limits surrounding brain-derived and inferred data.
View publisher pageStart a conversation
Need research designed around a regulatory decision?
DigiData develops independent studies, expert evidence, policy papers, regulatory submissions and use-case analysis for institutions and organisations facing difficult digital-regulation questions.