The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a pivotal piece of legislation enacted by the European Union (EU) that came into force on May 25, 2018. Designed to modernize laws that protect the personal information of individuals, GDPR aims to give control back to EU residents over their personal data while simplifying the regulatory environment for international business by unifying data protection regulations within the EU. The regulation applies not only to organizations located within the EU but also to those managing the data of EU residents from outside the EU. This wide-reaching impact makes GDPR a global standard for data protection and privacy.
GDPR introduces several key principles that govern the processing of personal data. These include lawfulness, fairness, and transparency, requiring that personal data be processed legally, fairly, and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject. Another critical aspect is the purpose limitation, which stipulates that data must be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. Data minimization and accuracy are also emphasized to ensure that personal data are adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary, as well as kept accurate and up-to-date.
Under GDPR, the rights of the data subjects have been significantly strengthened. Individuals now have the right to access their personal data and can ask for corrections, the erasure of their data, and can object to or restrict processing of their data. Furthermore, the GDPR introduces the right to data portability, allowing individuals to receive their personal data from a data controller in a commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit those data to another data controller. These provisions empower individuals with more control over their personal data, making consent more meaningful and easier to withdraw.
Compliance with GDPR is mandatory for all organizations that process the personal data of individuals residing in the EU, with heavy penalties for non-compliance. Fines for breaching GDPR can go up to €20 million or 4% of the annual global turnover of the company, whichever is higher. This potential financial repercussion underscores the importance of GDPR compliance. Organizations are also encouraged to adopt privacy_by_design and privacy_by_default approaches, incorporating data protection from the onset of the designing of systems, rather than as an addition. As we progress further into the digital age, the principles and practices outlined in GDPR are increasingly serving as a global benchmark for data protection and privacy, influencing legislation beyond Europe, such as the California_Consumer_Privacy_Act (CCPA) and Brazil’s Lei_Geral_de_Proteção_de_Dados (LGPD).