Data Protection and Privacy

The concept of personal data protection is to set up legislative, organizational and technological measures that safeguard individuals’ right to privacy with regard to the processing of their personal data. Namely, these principles have been embodied in current European legislation and in self-regulation policies. Thus, by imposing legal obligations on data controllers and granting rights to data subjects, the idea of personal data protection is aiming to ensure secure and just environment for the exchange of personal information.

In the field of personal data protection the Law and Internet Foundation team members have distinguished themselves with significant experience and knowledge of problems of protection, processing and transferring of personal data of third parties, development and preservation of international centralized databases, disclosure of personal data to competent state offices by necessity for the purposes of the criminal investigations and accusations; registration of data controllers, etc.

Different state administrations (ministries, agencies and commissions) confide in the knowledge and long-term practice of Law and Internet Foundation in the area of personal data protection. Its experts are frequently invited to participate in developing national legislation on these matters. They are lecturers of multiple international conferences, forums and seminars in the field of personal data protection, including trainings of state officers from the agencies, responsible for personal data protection and relevant departments in the state administration.

One of the leading Law and Internet Foundation experts is a member of the prestigious European Privacy Institute.

In 2007 Law and Internet Foundation developed the very first seminar on the implementation of the European legislation, regarding personal data protection in Bulgaria and the European practices in the field. Among the participants were some of the most popular European experts.

In 2010, being a project partner, the team of Law and Internet Foundation started the implementation of the project ‘Consumer Sentiment Regarding Privacy on User Generated Content (UGC) Services in the Digital Economy’ (CONSENT) that seeks to examine how consumer behaviour and commercial practices are changing the role of consent in processing personal data. CONSENT will advance the knowledge base that underpins the formulation and implementation of policies and corporate procedures in the area of privacy and consumer protection, with a view to informing policy-making in the European Union and contributing to the development of European research communities in these areas. The project is being developed with the financial support of European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme.

The project ‘Scalable Measures for Automated Recognition Technologies’ (SMART) started in 2011, combining a technical review of key application with a review of existing pertinent legislation with the aim to analyze the smart surveillance technologies, including border control, crowd-control, counter-terrorism and e-government. The project moves on to create a tool-kit, which would be useful to system designers, policy makers and legislative draftsmen across Europe. At this stage, the project would aid bringing significant EU-wide expertise in data protection legislation, in order to prepare a draft model law, which would contain a number of measures providing adequate safeguards for the data subject and thus, rendering use of smart surveillance compliant with CFD 2008/977/JHA and other applicable regulations. Law and Internet Foundation team participates as a coordinator of Work Package "Smart Surveillance in Key Area of Application 4 – e-Government".

The convergence of telecommunications, media and information technologies blurs the traditional boundaries between the public and private sector and the development of a new legal framework, which allows efficient competition, giving a large scope of services to the end consumers. Principles embodied in such a framework are: fair and effective competition; regulating access to publicly available electronic communications networks and services and interconnection arrangements in a way that ensures effective functioning of the market, where negotiating power differs and where, for the provision of some services, suppliers depend on infrastructures provided by others; providing a minimum of services to end users at an affordable price; encouraging interoperability in order to benefit customers; encouraging cooperation between network operators and manufacturers so that access to electronic communications services by disabled users can be made possible; proportionate data retention obligations on service providers and network operators; ensuring privacy with regard to the processing of personal information in relation to the provision of electronic communications services, etc.

Law and Internet Foundation experts prepared a number of legal consultations on different regulatory issues and participated in drafting a wide range of acts and secondary legislation supporting the activities of Communications Regulation Commission, Commission on Protection of Competition etc., – all of them with key significance for the acceleration of the process of liberalization of the Bulgarian telecommunications market.

In 2005 Law and Internet Foundation team created the new Electronic Communications Act in accordance with the regulatory framework of the European Union (acquis communautaire ‘2002) and the consecutive EU documents. In the following years the Foundation has actively participated in developing the secondary legislation in the field. It has conducted trainings on the implementation of the Electronic Communications Act and has supported on expert level the activities of particular interdepartmental work groups.

Nowadays, the experts of the Foundation consult the Ministry of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications in the implementation of the revised EU regulatory framework in e-Communications in 2009 on a national level and serve with their expertise in the field to the National Assembly in policy making processes.