25 - Moving Beyond the Special Rapporteur on Privacy with the Establishment of a New, Specialised United Nations Agency: Addressing the Deficit in Global Cooperation for the Protection of Data Privacy

Summary

INTRODUCTION

While the protection of privacy is a global concern, the new technologies or methods of processing of personal data – such as big data, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, or smartphone applications – might easily drive to despair any legislator attempting to apply local jurisdictional approaches to personal data processing This is because this type of processing is by design addressed directly to individuals anywhere in the world, treating national borders as irrelevant.

Quite contrary to what is urgently needed, an entrenchment attitude may be identified even in regional and global data privacy models devised today at the level of the European Union (EU), the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) At state level, an increased interest in data privacy has been identified, with more than 100 countries having by now enacted some sort of data protection law within their respective jurisdictions However, this does not necessarily mean that they all approve of and subscribe to, for example, the EU model or any other of the above available global models Regulatory approaches are diverging, failing to reach out to each other Even compatibility among them is hard to achieve, as the recent Privacy Shield saga 3 demonstrates While the right to data privacy is globally acknowledged as an important safeguard for individuals in the digital era, the way to protect it is understood differently in different parts of the world To avoid legal fragmentation, it appears that global cooperation and coordination is imperative However, the ways to achieve it vary considerably, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles lie ahead.

While the question whether an international treaty or convention, which would constitute the obvious policy option, is a viable solution has already been addressed in theory, mostly towards the negative, some hope may come from the United Nations (UN) In July 2015, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Professor Joseph Cannataci as its first-ever Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy His mandate is, among others, to gather information, identify obstacles, take part in global initiatives and raise awareness.