October 1993.Bill Clinton has recently been elected president in the United States.Checoslovaquia has ceased to exist and the Medellin cartel terrorizes Colombia, while Pablo Escobar counts his last days.In the Spanish covers the future of Europe and democracy.There was talk of reforming the labor market and a new abortion law that would never be approved.Discussions resembled those of today, but a revolution was beginning to cook .
RelatedThe Internet was then something unknown to most of the population.In our country, there was a whopping 10,000 machines connected to the network (according to Red Iris data ).There were 10,000 web pages in the world.Mobile phones would be a luxury from the following year (1994); smartphones , still science fiction.Most of the inhabitants of the planet had not yet begun to leave the trail of data that haunts us today.And yet, that October of 1993 was born the Spanish Agency for Data Protection as a premonition of what was to come.
everything we've changed
The figures speak for themselves.But there is no need to go so far back.Only a decade ago, only one in two homes had internet in Spain.And less than one in three people used the network.At the beginning of the century XXI there was a computer for every three homes.Social networks were somewhat foreign to most (Facebook was born in 2004).Today, every home has more than six devices connected to the Internet.92% of citizens have a smartphone .And 85% use some kind of social network, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Data to illustrate the digital revolution there is to look where you look.And it is precisely the data, the ones that have been the most debated in recent years."Today we live in a digital society in which, with great ease and low cost, are stored, exchanged, analyzed, and used for multiple purposes, large volumes of information about people's lives.Internet activity has experienced an intense process of concentration in which the model of Most service providers 'business is based on the monetization of users' personal information, "says Mar Espana Marti, president of the AEPD, in the book '25 years of the AEPD: accompanying the citizen in his digital transformation.
Thus, today we enjoy a wide range of free services that are financed with personalized advertising.Its power is in the analysis of the daily habits of users to develop profiles on their interests.In ensuring respect for privacy is the The key to the digital world and user confidence.According to the National Observatory for Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI), 85% of Spanish people trust the network, and 75% believe that the Internet will It makes life easier and saves you time.
and data protection has changed
«This revolution has meant that the Agency has gone from managing dozens of complaints related, fundamentally, to improper inclusion in delinquent files and unwanted advertising by companies in the national sphere, to guarantee the protection of data personnel regarding multinational companies whose services affect more than 4,000 million Internet users, "explains Mar Espana Marti.
Almost no one had heard about the internet in the early 1990s.A decade later, the outlook had changed a lot.In 1999, Organic Law 15/1999 on the Protection of Personal Data was passed, in force until the recent entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union.Then, more than 60 people were already working in the AEPD watching over the rights of an incipient connected population.
The legal reforms and the awareness of the population also caused, according to the AEPD, an increase in complaints, complaints and consultations.In 1994, 81 claims were processed for data breach People.While in 2017 there were 10,500.In the year 2000 there were 19,262 inquiries by citizens and businesses.17 years later there were more than 85,000, with peaks such as the year 2011 (134,000 queries).
great sanctions and a European regulation
To talk about data protection today is to talk about the two internet giants: Google and Facebook.For the past few years, the AEPD has focused on them.In 2013, the agency sanctioned Google for three violations of the LOPD in relation to the modification of its privacy policy.The company had to adapt to the law immediately and pay a fine of 900,000 euros.
Another similar case is that of Facebook.In 2017, the agency proved that Facebook collected data on ideology, sex, religious beliefs, personal tastes or navigation without clearly informing about the use and purpose that I was going to give them, nor of the data I collected.The penalty, in this case, was just over 1.2 million euros.
In the last five years, the debate on data protection has taken up all political agendas.The right to be forgotten, the need to protect privacy to achieve a more fair big data and The fight against information theft has become quite recurring topics of conversation.Looking to give you an answer, since last May 25, a unique data protection regulation prevails in Europe.It is the RGPD or GDPR, for its acronym in English.During the last year, a good part of the efforts of the AEPD have been destined to ensure the application and compliance with these new regulations.
In fact, the agency has just launched a search engine so that citizens can consult the registry of data protection delegates (DPD).That is, a repository that includes a list of contacts of those responsible for data processing of about 20,000 entities, a number that will be updated gradually.The figure of the delegate is key to the proper functioning of the GDPR.
The polemic of the last hour
The adaptation of the European regulation to the Spanish legislation has not been exempt from controversy either .The new data protection law, which has just been approved, provides that political parties can use personal data of almost any source without the need for prior consent during the election campaign.An added last minute is still to be seen if he receives the approval of the European Union (the explicit consent of the person is one of the GDPR keys).
Fourth century of the Spanish Agency for Data Protection.More or less the same years as the information society.Although the pace of events may seem dizzying, the digitalization is still in honeycombs and there are many changes to come.In the coming years we will see the true power of big data, we will experience the rise of artificial intelligence and verify that more and more things are connected to the internet.The mission of the AEPD has only just begun.
Images | AEPD, Pixabay
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