Data Privacy: The Seven Glоbal Privacy Principles (Essay Sample)

Data privacy
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Introduction
People, both as consumers and citizens, should have the means to enjoy not only their privacy rights but also protect themselves as well as their personal information from getting into abusive hands. Data protection concerns keeping an individual’s right to privacy safe. Such power is preserved in both the regional and international conventions and laws. Data protection refers to the regulation designed to protect the collected, processed, and stored personal information of an individual in a filing system or an ‘automated’ means. In the morn society, data privacy or protection laws protect people from abuses by restraining and shaping the activities of both the governments and companies. Such organizations have consistently proven that unless rules control their actions, they will continue collecting, mining, and keeping personal information of individuals while telling them nothing at all. The paper addresses the need for data protection as well as the privacy principles included by most by most organizations in their self-regulation for data privacy.
The need for data privacy protection
Individuals have to hand over their personal information every time they register for email, buy a product online, use a service, visit a company or doctor or enter into a contract. Without their knowledge, such data about them get generated and captured by other organizations that they have never interacted with at any given place. Having a secure data protection practices is the surest way in which consumers and citizens can gain confidence in companies and governments. Effective legislation needs to accompany such methods to regulate surveillance by firms and reduce unnecessary monitoring by officialdom (Bygrave, 2014).
Given the expansion of the capabilities of information technology since the 1960s, companies and other agencies have been keeping an individual’s personal information in databases. One can search, edit, cross-reference or share data from a database with other organizations all over the world (Bygrave, 2014). The widespread of the collection and processing of data resulted in unanswered questions from people concerning what was happening to their personal information just after turning them over. Was their data kept accurately? Who had an obligation to access it? Was it collected and distributed elsewhere without informing them? Could such information be used to abuse or discriminate their other primary rights?
The growing concern of the public led to the development of the data privacy protection principles through various international as well as national deliberations. In 1970, the Hesse region of Germany passed the first law while the United States Fair Credit Reporting Act of the same year also included data privacy protection elements (Bygrave, 2014). That notwithstanding, in the early 1970s, the United States of America spearheaded the development of the “fair information practices” which shaped the today’s data privacy protection laws. On the other hand, the United Kingdom formed a committee in the same period to examine the threats imposed by the private organizations and agencies on its citizens and came up with the conclusions. What followed these developments were the national laws which began with France, Germany, the United States of America, and Sweden (Bygrave, 2014). The momentum increased in 1980 upon the development of privacy guidelines by the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD) which encompassed “privacy principles” before the formation of the Council of Europe’s convention.
Data privacy protection principles
The companies or organizations which collect and use individuals’ personal information have the sole responsibility to ensure that the handling of such data adheres to the established data privacy protection law. Such privacy law focuses on some basic principles which include;
Collection limitation
According to this policy, there exist limits to what is collected. There are limitations to the personal information retrieved and obtaining such data should be through fair and lawful methods with the consent or knowledge of the concerned person.
Purpose specification principle
There must be no secret purposes. The reason for the collection of personal information must be given during the collection process. Similarly, the subsequent application of such data must be in line with the stated collection purpose. The organization must inform the concerned individuals in case of a change in the application (Chua et al., 2017).
Data quality
According to this principle, the personal information collected should be correct. It must be relevant to the purpose of its use, up to date, and accurate.
Use limitation
The use limitation principle asserts that the disclosing, use, or retention of personal information must only be for the original motive except by the authority of law or the consent of the data subject. There should be no creeping purposes. The deletion of such personal information must take place when it is no longer significant for the primary purpose.
Security safeguards
The obtained data must be secure. The organization must use the relevant security safeguards to protect individuals’ personal information from getting lost, disclosed, destroyed, modified or accessed by unauthoriz...