Virtual Shadows

A dilemma that you are a part of can be confusing. You may not even realise that a decision that you must take is presenting for you a personal/professional dilemma. As a data protection officer, this becomes very evident, and problematic requiring skills beyond what is considered normal, i.e. legal, security, etc.

The most profound privacy dilemma is that in any democratic society, it is a human right to have freedom of speech, as is it a human right to a private life. On a more personal level, we want a right to privacy for ourselves per se, but for others, we want to know what our family, friends, acquaintances, are up to!

Then there is the human right to feel safe, which can be provided with the installation of cameras, alarms, etc., in shops, petrol stations, metros, and even in our homes. But this conflicts with our human right for a private life!

Dilemmas come in many forms even in our daily life, especially as parents. I remember when I was offered a job at Cern in Geneva in 1996, at the time I was living in UK, a single parent with a 16 year old son. I was not immediately in a dilemma, I gave him the choice to join me in France, go to a French school, learn French, skiing every weekend, etc., a wonderful life ….which he refused. Funnily enough, looking back now, my immediate dilemma was not to respect my son’s wishes and then find a way so that he could stay and I could go, my dilemma was what others would say about me as a mother. Maybe I had to refuse the job offer?

If we return to the role of the data protection officer. Often the DPO will advise on what is the best course of action when standing in the shoes of the data subject, then it is up to the business to make a decision. If this decision conflicts with advice from the DPO. This is a business dilemma, e.g. lack of transparency concerning a personal data breach (not yet confirmed) versus doing what is right as per GDPR.

If the DPO role as defined in the GDPR Articles 37-39 is respected by the business, then as long as the DPO is experienced and aware of the dilemma and potential conflict with the business, a way forward can be found. It is another skillset required for a DPO not mentioned in the GDPR, or even in any book I’ve read so far, and that is the ability to mediate between the business and meet data subject rights. To able to see the trees for the wood, to see there is a dilemma, to see that it is not personal, it is life.

Just in case you are interested in the outcome of my dilemma as a mother. A year following the decision my son told me when visiting me in France, that it was in fact the best parenting decision I had made to leave him in UK. He was freed from my mothering…which he’d had enough of. So as unlikely was this outcome, it was indeed the right decision for us both.

A question which is still creating something of a storm in some circles. Mainly in those that make money from the intricately complex interpretations of law text which is further complicated by neighbouring laws, such as Intellectual Property (IP).

Most legal guys, and even worse my esteemed colleagues who started their careers in other domains such as cyber, just love to do this. Make it difficult and the more complex and intricate the better; and will even go as far as to condemn those who dare to state that my personal data belongs to me.

Well condemn me as you like, because this is the message I give to my customers! And why? Because to do anything different would forge dependancy instead of fostering empowerment.

Karen Lawrence Öqvist, Founder/CEO Privacy

Clearly from a deep legal technical standpoint I cannot have claim to own my personal data. But this is irrelevant to 99.99% of the worlds population who (1) do not have a law degree, or (2) are not working in the domain of GDPR, or in the slightest bit interested to do so.

If I was to start with a dive into the intricacies of IP law, there will be a zero comprehension of an individual’s rights pertaining to GDPR and their personal data. If this is where I, as a professional were to start… my customer who maybe installs alarms for a living, will be thinking but “….who cares except for the music industry?”

For my customers, I have only 20-30 minutes of training for each employee, to get the message across. And the message needs to be formulated in a way so that the business achieves the desired result, i.e. compliance as far as is practicable with GDPR Rules. And yes, I even use the terminology GDPR Rules, because my customers understand what a rule is!

For the GDPR Administrator the training is 3 hours. This is not long enough to dive into 250 pages of GDPR legal text and even IP law. It is long enough to ensure that he/she can do her job, and understands data subject rights and that these rights are not absolute. Some GDPR Admins I train even get excited about the subject matter. And only then can one take the next step.

I sometimes am concerned that I may simplify things too far, to a level whereby my skills are redundant, but in short this approach: costs less for my customers; and, they know exactly what they are getting for every € they spend which are building blocks for trust.

#EDPB in draft #Guidelines 01/2022 attempted to clarify the scope of the controller’s obligation to provide «a copy of the personal data undergoing processing» (Article 15(3) #GDPR).

What Article 15(3) implies by «a copy» – has long been a controversial issue, while approaches varied across #EU Member States. Below are some examples:

#Germany: there have been contradictory views as to how the term “copy” should be understood – i.e. whether it should be literally a copy or just summary (https://lnkd.in/eRbC5gY7)

#Austria: GDPR (Article 15(3)) does not grant a right of access to files or documents. However, the content of documents may qualify as personal data. Providing copies of personal data stored within a document will often be the easiest option by redacting superfluous information and providing the document to the applicant (https://lnkd.in/eRgPcEDs)

More insights can be obtained from the #IAPP article – https://lnkd.in/e9g37p9v

Now, EDPB seems to take a so-called ‘fit-for-purpose’ approach to how the notion of ‘copy’ should be understood.

Para 23, 25 of the draft Guidelines 01/2022 say that a right to obtain a copy refers ‘not necessarily to a reproduction of the original documents’ and ‘that the information on the personal data concerning the person who makes the request is provided to the data subject in a way which allows the data subject to retain all of the information and to come back to it’.

Further to this, para 150 stipulates that ‘an obligation to provide the data subject with a copy of the personal data undergoing processing […] does not mean that the data subject always has the right to obtain a copy of the documents containing the personal data, but an unaltered copy of the personal data being processed in these documents. Such copy of the personal data could be provided through a compilation containing all personal data covered by the right of access as long as the compilation makes it possible for the data subject to be made aware and verify the lawfulness of the processing’.

In other words, against this purpose, ‘it is the responsibility of the controller to decide upon the appropriate form in which the #personaldata will be provided’.

I intentionally deterred myself so far from reading opinions and analytics about newly issued Guidelines 05/2021 so that those do not inform my personal ‘first’ opinion. 

For now, Guidelines 05/2021 do not appear to be a big deal at all, nor are they free from inconsistency with the new SCCs and from casuistic examples.

1) Three criterions of transfers do not look like something ‘surprising’. C’mon, there could scarcely be anyone who expected the existence of ‘transfer’ between a controller/processor and a data subject. Maybe it is just me, but I can see few (if any) things that could be seen as significantly changing the landscape and adding value to the current understanding of things. 

2) At the same time, a misalignment between the EU Commission and the EDPB still continues. Recital 7 of the SCCs implementing decision noted that SCCs may be used for transfers “only to the extent that the processing by the importer does not fall within the scope of Regulation (EU) 2016/679”, and this is in clear contradiction with EDPB’s transfer criteria #3. More on the conflict between the Commission’s and EDPB’s approaches can be read here: https://iapp.org/news/a/why-it-is-unlikely-the-announced-supplemental-sccs-will-materialize/?mkt_tok=MTM4LUVaTS0wNDIAAAGAiv2DhonU2mSs-GNpYnvfsyMcmuYxz64LrNpH1YIA75K7-YZFEz3tT0a3i4wGnMiMXfBDlsr1mVDx_wDm-qJrSV0CybkgplN9HxJo5DkdpDW2

More interesting, there is still no uniform definition of ‘data exporter’ and ‘data importer’. From new Guidelines 05/2021 it is clear that only controllers, processors and joint controllers may qualify as ‘data exporter’ or ‘data importer’, and only between exporters and importers a transfer may take place. More or less (with some textual discrepancies) the same understanding may be seen in Annex 1 of the EDPB Recommendations 01/2020. But the different approach is seen in Clause 1(b) of the SCCs where the understanding of ‘exporter’ of ‘importer’ bears no relation to controllership issues. 

3) Such details may become important in some scenarios – let’s look at Example 5 (employee of a EU-based company travelling to a third country). First of all, this example seems to be borrowed from Norwegian DPA’s guidance – https://www.datatilsynet.no/rettigheter-og-plikter/virksomhetenes-plikter/overforing-av-personopplysninger-ut-av-eos/ . Second, what if, let’s say, an employee is not travelling to a third country but permanently sits there? Will this change the assessment and why does EDPB endorse such casuistic examples? Will this make the employee ‘importer’ and will this give rise to a ‘transfer’? My answer is ‘No’ for many reasons. And if the EDPB agrees (does it?..), what would be the role of such employee in the scheme? I tend to believe these will qualify as an ‘establishment’ of an employer (who, in turn, can be either a controller or processor). 

But never mind, it is just an example, and it does not really matter what I (or you) personally think. It is EDPB (not us) who is here to give clear answers applicable in a vast majority of scenarios – as opposed to superficial and often evident explanations and casuistic examples, evading a deep-dive into the heart of the issues. 

The IAPP article provides retrospective of the #anonymisation issue under European data protection landscape and reiterates that there is still no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to making personal data #anonymised. 

The current standing can be described as confusion and vacillation, and, probably, the main culprit of this is #WP29 which took contradictory stances to anonymisation in 2007 and 2014, followed by ignorance from #EDPB side and, again, contradictory stances of national DPAs prone to either 2007 or 2014 approaches.

The simple thing is that straightforward ‘disguising of identity’ (e.g. by one-way cryptography), as WP29 suggested in 2007, can no longer be accepted as anonymisation (of course, unless stated otherwise by a national DPA). And the simple thing number two is that there is no industry standard describing step-by-step anonymisation algorithms and techniques. 

From a practical standpoint this calls for a case-by-cases assessment by an anonymisation entity. The recent AEPD-EDPS joint paper ‘on 10 misunderstandings related to anonymisation’ (‘joint paper’) specifically mentions that ‘anonymisation processes need to be tailored to the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing as well as the risks of varying likelihood and severity for the rights and freedoms of natural persons’.

Out of options suggested by the article, the most practical and realistic is, probably, arguing the risks of reidentification is sufficiently remote in every single case where anonymisation is relied on. In fact, this will require an ‘Anonymisation Impact Assessment’ (I have just come up with this term) which must include assessment of re-identification risks. The joint paper acknowledges that such risks are ‘never zero’ (‘except for specific cases where data is highly generalised’) and that ‘a residual risk of re-identification must be considered’.

Until to date, although addressed by WP29 and adopted by the GDPR, the notion of anonymisation and its application still remains ‘terra incognita’.