DATA PROTECTION AND CONFIDENTIALITY

An interactive session on data protection and confidentiality were held at the Department of Sociology and Social Work of CHRIST(Deemed to be University) in Bangalore with M.A. I & II-year students. It was an informative lecture conducted by Professor Rolf Jox on Data Protection and Confidentiality – The Example of Germany. 

He addressed the following German laws regarding the concerned matter:

~ Article 2 i.e., General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Material Scope. 

~ Article 4 which defines personal data as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject) and processing as “any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data”. 

He further mentioned that data will be protected through all protecting laws, respective general rules and provisions of the GDPR, national rules of data protection and provision of penal and civil law. He spoke about how personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject; collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the processes for which they are processed; processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data. Article 6 which talks about the lawfulness of processing states that processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that one of the following applies: the data subject has given consent to the processing of his/her personal data for one or more specific purposes and there is secure handling of data protection/ confidentiality.

Lastly, he spoke about anonymization. He believes that anonymization should be made possible for permitting the client’s consent too (Article, 8 GDPR). The issue of consent was also focussed upon in understanding data confidentiality. The Q&A session was also meaningful. As a whole, the lecture was very enlightening as knowledge regarding different laws concerning the issue in Germany was gained and also discussed to some extent in the Indian context.