UN Report on privacy and data protection as an increasingly precious asset in the digital era
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy Ana Brian Nougrères published a report in which she laid out ten guiding principles “as a key structural part of every national legal system that regulate the actions of controllers and processors in the processing of personal data”.
According to the Special Rapporteur, “privacy is a human right that enables the free development of personality and the exercise of rights in accordance with the dignity of the human being […]. But today, we live in a world where participating in public and private activity at the national and international level requires more and more personal data to be processed”. Her goal is to achieve “cooperation and regulatory harmonization at the international level”. While many States regulate data protection and privacy issues nationally, international law enshrines the right to privacy in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Special Rapporteur indicated that national legislation already has much in common regarding the principles of privacy and data protection which can “serve as a basis for progressing towards a global consensus that will make it possible to address various challenges that arise in the processing and international transfer of data concerning individuals to ensure that their right to privacy is safeguarded in both virtual and face-to-face environments”.
The ten key principles analyzed are legality, consent, transparency, purpose, loyalty, proportionality, minimization, quality, responsibility, and security – hardly news from an EU perspective. This is not a coincidence, as the Special Rapporteur used several supranational legal frameworks, including the GDPR, as a base for her analysis. This shows once more that a solely Eurocentric view on privacy and data protection is ill-advised, as other parts of the world may not find the principles quite as self-evident. With her report, the Special Rapporteur wishes to encourage and guide States “to strike a balance between the different conflicting interests in the processing of personal data and the right to privacy in the global and digital era”.
