Why do I keep talking about the concept of “personal data”? From cases regarding privacy-friendly analytics to cases on equipment, from user preferences to pseudonymisation, many clients come to me with practical scenarios in which the recognition of an individual is irrelevant – sometimes even the very opposite of what an organisation is trying to do.
Want to reuse clinical sample data without the original identifier? “Is it personal data?” is a very important issue. Want to use random IDs, browser agent and screen size combinations to identify *devices* but not *individuals*? “Is it personal data?” is very important too.
Whether it is at the stage of product design or in the context of data litigation, businesses need *foreseeability*. They need to understand what the consequences are of a particular set of circumstances – and some recent evolutions have made that a little less clear than it could have been.
This Thursday, it is possible that the EU Court of Justice might consider that when information is transmitted by someone to a recipient, that recipient’s perspective matters to determine whether the recipient should treat it as personal data. Depending on which conditions are then tied to that perspective – to which extent are means for identification “reasonable” and at that recipient’s disposal -, this could allow for useful flexibility. And it doesn’t need to be seen as an outcome that would come at the cost of privacy rights.
But watch this space. Our LinkedIn Live debate Thursday afternoon (with 500+ registered attendees so far) will allow a deeper dive into what is “personal data” and what the Court’s upcoming decision on the GDPR means for a broad range of sectors, technologies and techniques, taking into account the spirit of data protection law, individuals’ rights and other rights and freedoms too.
I hope that this judgment will allow for a clean combination of the Breyer, Scania and IAB Europe judgments of the Court, but there could always be a formalistic outcome – or even a simple procedural outcome to avoid getting into the meaty bits of this question:
What is personal data?
Link to the event: https://lnkd.in/e3EJjy8S
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