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The Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT) has held, electronically, another edition of the conference Update and experiences on key points of the GDPR in response to the high demand for places that it received on the occasion of the first conference. In fact, the second event was initially scheduled for 10 March, but the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to be postponed.
The conference was once again used to delve into key aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), such as transparency and the right to information, the legitimacy of processing special categories of data and notification of security breaches.
Maria Àngels Barbarà, Director of the APDCAT, was in charge of presenting the event and stressed the importance of the GDPR in the current context of technological innovation: "in a data focussed and globalized society, the GDPR regulates obligations to guarantee the principles, values, rights and freedoms that make up democratic societies."
Currently, the right to data protection is becoming central to ensuring that innovation and technological development are undertaken while respecting and strengthening rights and freedoms.
Barbarà also called for the need for technological development to "improve the quality of life of people and not destroy rights and freedoms that have been acquired," stressing that it is necessary to "find solutions adapted to the new model of society, which generate adequate trust." And she warned that "technologies are no longer a mere tool and are moving on to design and define our way of being and living as individuals and as a society." In this sense, Barbarà valued the GDPR as a "sufficiently strong legal framework to protect the right to data protection," and as an instrument that "gives us sufficiently flexible tools to design technology with an eye on people and the common good." "If technology advances using our data, it must necessarily guarantee our rights and freedoms," concluded Barbarà.
Trust is an essential asset in a society that seeks to develop based on technology and data.
Barbarà conveyed a strong idea that marks the actions of the Authority: "technology is advancing by using our data and, necessarily, it must do so by guaranteeing our rights and freedoms."
At the end of the director's speech, Joana Marí, data protection officer and head of Strategic Projects at the APDCAT, focused her presentation on the principle of transparency and the right to information for the achievement of the objectives of the GDPR. More specifically, Marí placed special emphasis on the need for people to be provided with information to allow them to control their own data.
Next, Santiago Farré, Head of the Legal Department of the APDCAT, put forward some broad ideas to the participants on the processing of special categories of data, focussing on the modifications derived from the approval of organic Law 3/2018 of 5 December, as well as some of the most relevant recent court decisions on the matter.
Finally, Blanca Peraferrer, Head of the Inspection and Technical Area of the APDCAT, spoke on the obligation of those responsible for the processing of personal data to notify security breaches to the control authorities, something that was included in the new GDPR that generates numerous queries in the APDCAT.