Entrevista Bojana Bellamy – día europeo Protección de datos 2014

Bojana Bellamy

President of Centre for Information Policy Leadership.

– THE YEAR 2013 HAS BEEN INTENSE IN NEWS ABOUT PRIVACY. WHICH ONE WOULD YOU HIGHLIGHT AND WHY?

For me the highlight of the whole year has been the fact that, for variety of reasons, privacy has now become a mainstream issue and top of the agenda topic of discussion in all our countries and organisations.  The fact that we are talking about it in a more coherent, knowledgeable and sometimes heated ways, is great news.

– CLOUD, BIG DATA, INTERNET OF THINGS, AUTOMATED CARS… FROM THE PRIVACY PERSPECTIVE, WHICH POINT OF VIEW SHOULD WE ADOPT IN VIEW OF THE CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY?

All these new technologies are challenging the way we think about privacy, the role of individual and how we implement basic data privacy principles. The old ideas of putting individuals in control are becoming outdated – they too much burden on individuals to understand and keep consenting all the time to ever increasing and less transparent and understandable uses of data. We have to put onus on organisations, who use data about individuals, to do so responsibly, according to external and internal rules and requirements and to be fully accountable towards individuals, regulators and business partners.

Also, organisations have to implement internal policies and procedures to embed data privacy in corporate DNA and build corporate privacy programs that will ensure this accountability. Finally, we all have to take a more risk based approach to privacy and implement innovative privacy risk framework to help us understand, identify, quality and address different risks to individuals as and when we develop new products, services and technologies.

– IF IN 2014 THE EUROPEAN UNION DOES NOT SEE A NEW REGULATION ON DATA PROTECTION, WHAT DO WE WIN, AND WHAT DO WE LOSE AS EU CITIZENS? AND AS PRIVACY PROFESSIONALS?

Bojana Bellamy:   It is both in the interest of European citizens, but also European businesses to have a new, uniform and more innovative approach to privacy regulation within the EU. It would be a real shame if the delays with the EU DP Regulation would erode these important objectives. In particular, it is critical that we achieve a single, Europe-wide, harmonised set of data privacy rules, to benefit both European businesses and European citizens.  Privacy professionals will have to keep the interest in data privacy within their organisations , to ensure their management continues to focus on data privacy , despite the delays in the adoption of the EU DP Regulation.

– WHICH ROLE SHOULD BE PLAYED BY THE PRIVACY PROFESSIONALS IN THE SOCIETY?

Bojana Bellamy:  Privacy professionals have an increasingly important "guardian" role to play  – they need to reconcile and balance the need for growth, innovation and society benefits with the need to protect individuals’ privacy and minimise risks to individuals.  This is not an easy task, and requires multidisciplinary skills – legal, technical, managerial, political, ethical.