EDIC in Eastern Latgale organised a seminar on the protection of personal data in European Union countries and Latvia
The right to the protection of personal data is a fundamental right enshrined in European Union (EU) Treaties and binding on all EU citizens, while the promotion of awareness, as well as the education of citizens on these issues, is one of the Union's priorities, so in mid-November the Europe Direct Information Centre (EDIC) in Eastern Latgale to a seminar on data protection in the European Union and Latvia invited the counsellors of the Rēzekne District Councils, as well as the emerging and already existing lawyers of the Rēzekne Technology Academy, who are closely faced with issues of the protection of personal data in their work.
The seminar was chaired by Māris Ruķers, a member of the working group on the development of personal data protection law, an instructor of the legal faculty of Latvia's university, a member of the board of directors of the legal service company “E-society solutions”, as well as the author of several books and publications.
In the beginning, the lector told the new EU regulation on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and the circulation of data, as well as the current laws and regulations of Latvia, for example, from 2018 banks will need to be specifically accredited to be able to work with personal data. Similarly, as of 2018, every citizen of Latvia will be given an official electronic mail address, which will be mandatory for legal persons in correspondence with public administration institutions, while residents - natural persons - will be able to choose whether correspondence from public institutions is to be received by mail or electronic letters in the new e-mail system.
“The wider the circulation of data, the more problems arise,” Maris Ruker emphasized, “for example, often rows to kindergartens are posted on the Internet, as well as a very sin for the organisers of various sports competitions, which publish participants' data on the Internet, as well as data on results which, in fact, should not be done for data protection purposes.”
With regard to the protection of personal data, special attention should be paid to the non-disclosure of your personal code: “if any crazy person knows your name, surname, and personal identity code, it can be hired, although you don't even know it, in such a way as to write down the“ grey ”features you don't get, of course. As you know your personal code and collaborate with crazy leasing company employees, you can get a leasing on your name," Maris Ruker said about the most frequent types of fraud with personal code data.
As the lecturer pointed out, companies working with personal data may be subject to a considerable penalty on the law and the non-compliance with laws, but the first thing is that we are responsible for the protection of their data, and therefore know their right to the protection of the privacy of the data is in our own interest, and in addition, if a company uses personal data, including in order to send the company's promotional offers, everyone has the right to waive the use of such a service and his data.
Madara Burtina,
Assistant Head of THE EDIC East Latgale