14 DAY TRIAL // Since the current Convention for the Protection of Individuals that addresses the matter of personal data protection and processing is dated from 1981, when the Internet was nowhere near what it has become today, the Council of Europe proposed a revised version.
The existing convention is employed by 43 countries and others have already expressed their interest in it, but since it’s not in line with the current problems faced by organizations, they plan on keeping the current framework, but modify it to make sure it’s more relevant.
“I think that certainly the fact that you have more and more privacy issues on the news, it's raised first general public opinion on those issues, but indeed also the fact that we know that we have a protective framework which is there, but maybe we need to make sure that those cases are not repeated,” Sophie Kwasny, secretary to the Consultative Committee of the Council of Europe data protection convention, said for VR-Zone.
“All those cases have definitely raised awareness ... of the fact that some of the legislations in place did not sufficiently cover some of the new threats to privacy.”
The main purpose of the update will be to strengthen the rights of individuals and, if so far there has been no clear distinction between data controllers and processors, from now on there will be one.
Privacy by design is a term that will have to be regarded seriously by all the businesses that handle and process personal data. If some organizations are already aware of this and are taking steps in implementing the principle, others will be forced to do so after the new law kicks in.
To make sure they won’t feel like they’re losing national sovereignty, the 50 or so countries that will sign the upcoming agreement will have the chance to enforce the new regulations in their own way.