A lecture for the trainees of EURASIA project.

1. Shall we learn how to protect
our personal data?
An introduction to personal privacy in European context
Dr. Nikolay Yanev
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski

2. Why it matters
• “Google has been fined 50 million euros (about $57 million) by a
French regulator for not properly disclosing to users how their data is
collected and used for targeted advertising.
• The penalty is the biggest yet imposed under a new European privacy
law that went into effect in 2018. The European Union's General Data
Protection Regulation gives Europeans more control over their
information and how companies use it.”
[cnet.com]

3. US company vs US idea
• Boston lawyers Samuel Warren, Louis Brandeis:
• the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a
principle … it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the
exact nature and extent of such protection…
• Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which
must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the
individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone". Instantaneous
photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of
private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to
make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be
proclaimed from the house-tops.“
[Harvard Law Review, 1890]

4. XIX century
• In 1837 Samuel Morse constructed the electrical telegraph /the
Morse code/
• In 1839 Louis Daguerre introduced the high-quality photography
(“commercially viable photographic process”)
• In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell signs his patent for the telephone
• In 1877, in Boston, Massachussets, the Bell telephone company is
created (Now American Telephone and Telegraph Company)

5. From the article to the court
• 1928 Olmstead vs the US:
• Wiretapping of liquor-smuggling ring, headed by Roy Olmstead
• 2 mln $ clandestine annual turnover
• US supreme court decision:
• “The language of the amendment cannot be extended and expanded to include
telephone wires”
• Justice Brandeis: “The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions
favourable to the pursuit of happiness… They conferred, as against the Government,
the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most
valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the
Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must
be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

6. Total War and totalitarian state
• War efforts
• Militarization
• Securitization
• Political police, state security and secret police services
• Huge databases of personal files (dossiers)
• Individual freedoms sacrificed for public security

7. The turning tide
• Post-war preoccupation with abuse of personal privacy
• Nov 4, 1950: Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (Council of Europe)
• The European court of human rights is established
• Art. 8: respect of private and family life
• In America, 1967, Katz vs the US. Charles Katz, an illicit gambler won
the case “to be let alone”:
• The Government's eavesdropping activities violated the privacy upon which
petitioner justifiably relied while using the telephone booth;
[US Supreme Court]

8. The war on terror
• 9/11 2001
• The Foreign Surveillance Act was changed to lower the legal bar for the
government to engage in wiretapping and other surveillance practices
• The Patriot Act (Oct. 26, 2001| allowed for easier and more comprehensive
surveillance of suspects as well as for thorough search of their records.
• Barack Obama, 2013:
we strengthened our defences – hardening targets, tightening transportation
security, and giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these
changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded
surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance we strike between
our interests in security and our values of privacy.

9. 1890: The right to be let alone (Harvard
Law Review)
1928: Olmstead vs the United States
1950: Convention for the protection of
Human Rights and Fundamental Principles
1967: Katz vs the United States
1995: The European Data Protection
Directive (Directive 95/46/EC)
1930-1945: The Totalitarian
Experience
2001: The Patriot Act
2006: Wikileaks starts publishing
documents
2014: Edward Snowden testimony to EU
Parliament
2014-2016-2018:
GDPR is adopted and enters into force
Security
Versus
Privacy

10. GDPR
• Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with
regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement
of such data alias General Data Protection Regulation
• Successor of:
• European Convention on Human rights and fundamental principles (1950)
• Data Protection Directive 1995

11. Definitions and practices
• What is “personal data” (any information relating to an identified or
identifiable natural person)
• What is “processor” (a natural or legal person, public authority,
agency or other body which processes personal data)
• What is “controller” (agency or other body which, alone or jointly
with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of
personal data)
• Rights for rectification or erasure (the right to be forgotten)
• Data protection agencies and officers
• Penalties

12. E-OpenSpace
• Distant, web-based training in the basics of GDPR and data protection
• Free courses for registered users
• Pilot project 2017-2019
http://eopen.cpdp.bg/
• Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Croatia
• Government agencies, NGOs, Academia

15. Further steps
• Bug reporting and system optimization
• Content development
• Mass on-line training
• Video lectures

16. You can contact me at:
n_yanev@yahoo.com