User data is best protected when all affected parties are on the same page regarding where that data is stored and what it is used for.
Protecting citizens‘ privacy is ingrained in the history of the United States; one can look back to the creation of the constitution for proof. For example, the fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, while the fifth protects against self-incrimination. The nation’s founders recognized the importance of guarding personal privacy (opens in new tab) to maintain citizens‘ safety and general well-being. As a result, individual citizens‘ right to privacy was woven into the country’s fabric, and it has been reinforced time and time again in the centuries since. The foundational values that informed these initial privacy laws can be viewed as a roadmap for today’s privacy-related statutes. Take the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which was enacted in 2018 and regulates modern personal data collection and use to prevent an individual’s privacy from being breached. Or Data Privacy Day originated 41 years ago and brings awareness to how European organizations and individual users can implement best practices in data protection. When enacting data privacy day four decades ago, it’s doubtful the Council of Europe could foresee the digital landscape we operate in today and the increasing importance of data privacy – much less the U.S. founding fathers trying to comprehend digital data privacy more than two hundred years ago. As modes of data creation, collection and use continue to evolve, governments and organizations across the world are tasked with evolving data privacy laws at the same rate. And while many countries have made great strides in upholding data privacy as our digital footprint has grown, the job is never done. What next steps can we take in ensuring that data privacy, a constitutional right, depending on interpretation, is maintained? From an organizational standpoint, evolution in protecting the data of individuals relies on further communication, compliance, and integrating privacy as a core value.
