Forgetting About Consent: Why the Focus Should Be on 'Suitable Safeguards' in Data Protection Law

21 Pages Posted: 8 May 2013 Last revised: 10 May 2013

Date Written: May 2013

Abstract

This paper explores the assumption that data processing based on consent is ancillary in the greater context of data protection, being only one of the six lawful bases for data processing. Moreover, the data protection draft regulation proposed by the European Commission in 2012 meets overwhelmingly the concerns regarding consent in data protection expressed on numerous occasions in the past years. Hence, the focus in data protection law should be, instead, on the development of efficient and clear provisions for handling data, which can be deemed as “suitable safeguards”, regardless of the bases of their processing. For instance, the rights of the data subject – access, information, erasure etc., purpose requirements and accountability rules are effective in all of the situations of data processing. This article proposes a set of such suitable safeguards which match the content and the purpose of the right to data protection.

Keywords: consent, draft regulation, rights of the data subject, suitable safeguards

Suggested Citation

Zanfir-Fortuna, Gabriela, Forgetting About Consent: Why the Focus Should Be on 'Suitable Safeguards' in Data Protection Law (May 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2261973 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2261973

Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna (Contact Author)

Future of Privacy Forum ( email )

United States

Independent ( email )

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