The General Law On Personal Data Protection (LGPD) And The Challenges Of Companies From Brazil Get Too Used To It
In Brazil, The General Law for the Protection of Personal Data (LGPD), Law №13,709, of August 14, 2018, provides for the processing of personal data, including in digital media, by a natural person or a legal person under public or private law, the objective of protecting the fundamental rights of freedom and privacy and the free development of the personality of the natural person. This was created in Brazil for the protection of all; a Law that does not need to be experts to understand the subject and even the paramount importance of regulation within the area. In documentaries like Netflix’s “The Great Hack”, the impacts of a policy to protect users and their information are shown, even documenting a scandal in which even the U.S. Supreme Court had to intervene. This personal information serves as statistics, economics and social not only for government agencies, but also for companies from the private sector. In other words: our data is worth a lot! Some say it is worth more than gold. How are national companies adapting to this new reality?
Main objectives of the new law:
Protection of privacy: ensuring the right to privacy and protection of users’ personal data, through transparent and secure practices, guaranteeing fundamental rights.
Transparency: establish clear rules on the processing of personal data.
Development: foster economic and technological development.
Standardization of norms: to establish unique and harmonious rules on the treatment of personal data, by all agents and controllers that process and collect data.
Legal security: strengthen the security of legal relations and the holder’s confidence in the processing of personal data, guaranteeing free initiative, free competition and the defense of commercial and consumer relations.
Favoring competition: promoting competition and free economic activity, including data portability.
The company has the chance to retain customers by protecting customer/user data, as well as protecting your business from future administrative or legal sanctions for any breach of the law.
Advantages for implementing the law:
*First, it is a legal obligation that must be respected;
*The improvement of the company’s reputation and image in the market;
*The highlight in relation to the competition;
*More credibility in the market due to the awareness of the protection of personal data;
*Appreciation by customers and business partners;
- The strengthening of commercial relations due to joint and several liability, while the company may close more contracts.
Thus, the adequacy of the LGPD may avoid the following risks:
-Fines;
-Leave the enterprise vulnerable;
-Publicity of the infraction committed after investigation and verification;
-Suspension of the database for a period of six months, and partial or total prohibition of the exercise related to data processing;
-Bad reputation of the company in the market;
-Receipt of administrative and judicial proceedings.
Personal data is an important asset for business, social and personal activity, as well as for the realization of public policies and global economic development, and the LGPD conceptualizes personal data as information related to the identified or identifiable natural person, according to Article 5, Item I (BRASIL, 2019d). So, at least, it can be said that this is information that, isolated or associated, is capable of allowing the identification of a natural person. Therefore, name, first name, marital status, Individual Taxpayer Number, identity card number, marital status, profession, information related to social or ethnic origin, health, political or religious beliefs, are some examples of personal data , which allows to distinguish from general data that have no objective link with the person (DONEDA, 2006, p. 157). It is evident, therefore, that the LGPD aims to protect transgressions of the characteristics or set of attributes that form the projection of the human person (BITTAR, 2015, p. 1).
With such a need for instruments to regulate and treat personal data in the search for a balance between technological development and attention to fundamental rights and, where information brings with it a social value, the LGPD appears in the Brazilian context. This is legislation aimed at protecting the person in the face of interests from various sources; It is considered a legislative framework clearly influenced by the European regulation and that changes the current paradigm of the collection and indiscriminate treatment of personal data. Furthermore, it represents an advance in the normative construction that protects the use of personal data, bringing, in addition to a brake on indiscriminate use, the possibility for entities that treat personal data to promote protection policies. The LGPD also brings with it the fundamentals of personal data protection, providing for rights and guarantees of the holder of personal data and aims to regulate the treatment, fostering a new reality for companies that, until then, acted with discretion and few regulatory restrictions , even with the protection in the Federal Constitution of 1988. It is concluded that business management will have a great challenge to meet the dictates of the laws, given the specificities for the implementation of an adequacy program carried out with care before the given term of the term, and, if they are not in compliance, they may suffer legal administrative sanctions.
Fonts: