Protection against automated decision making with personal data becomes a human right

Regardless the new data protection legislation in the EU, the worldwide standard of data protection increases too. Through the “Amendment of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (mostly known as “profiling”)” the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will apply this expansion of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the future.

For the last four decades, the Convention has been the only international legally binding instrument for the protection of privacy and personal data open to any country in the world. The aim of the amending is now to modernise and improve the Convention, taking into account the new challenges to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data that have occurred since the adoption of the Convention in 1980. In particular, this concerns new information and communication technologies, which require a different type of protection mechanism against privacy.

As for any other human right listed in the ECHR, any person can submit an individual application if she/he is violated by one of the contracting parties of the ECHR. This seems to be interesting especially regarding the investigation through profiling by national security authorities all over the European continent.

However, the adoption of the amendments also raises some questions. Particularly with regard to the relationship between European Union law and the Convention, which does not contain any explicit provisions in this respect, as well as deviations in the scope of application. Therefore the ECtHR will comment hopefully before the first lawsuits will start.