Three quarters of
Europeans think that the disclosure of personal data is an increasing part of
modern life. At the same time, 72% of Internet users are worried that they give
away too much personal data online. They feel they do not have complete control
of their data.
The Commission is
proposing a strengthened right to be forgotten so that if you no longer want
your personal data to be processed, and there is no legitimate reason for an organization
to keep it, it must be removed from their system. Data controllers must prove
that they need to keep the data rather than you having to prove that collecting
your data is not necessary.
What will be the key changes?
- Strengthening the ‘right to be forgotten’ to help people better manage data protection risks online. When individuals no longer want their data to be processed and there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it, the data will be deleted. The rules are about empowering people, not about erasing past events or restricting the freedom of the press.
- Guarantee easy access to your own data.
- Establishing a right for individuals to freely transfer personal data from one service provider to another (data portability).
- Ensuring that individuals must give consent explicitly when it is required for certain types of data processing.
- Increasing the responsibility and accountability of those processing data by introducing data protection officers for companies over 250 employees, and the principles of ‘privacy by default’ and ‘privacy by design’ to ensure that individuals are informed in an easily understandable way about how their data will be processed.
In January
2013 the EC proposed a comprehensive reform of the data protection rules.
The European Parliament last week cemented the strong support previously
given at committee level to the European Commission's data protection reform (MEMO/13/923 and MEMO/14/60) by voting in plenary with 621 votes
in favour and 10 against.