Privacy Talk with Leonardo Cervera Navas, Director of the EDPS: What do you expect with future collaboration?
This interview is talking about future data protection and human dignity.
Kohei is having great time discussing with human dignity and privacy with Leonardo Cervera Navas.
This interview outline:
- What does “digital sovereignty” mean?
- Why did you create “human dignity by design” concept?
- What do you expect with future collaboration?
- Message to listeners
Kohei: I see, yeah, that is a very big overview and big picture. I’ve seen in this some of the great initiatives created to the data transfers to third countries. There could be the requirements to make a cooperative approach between different jurisdictions such as Europe and US. That is very important as well as in your countries.
This seems to be a very interesting topic to me then. It’s an important topic at national level and at global level. I assume it. So my next question is about digital sovereignty.
So you have one speech where you quote this word. What does “digital sovereignty” mean for yourself?
- What does “digital sovereignty” mean?
Leonardo: Thank you. I think the recent COVID-19 crisis has very well highlighted two things. First, how interdependent we are in our societies, how interdependent we are from other regions, how do we need to cooperate with each other to manage global challenges.
But at the same time, the importance of having some strategic autonomy in our regions to be able to address these challenges from our own principles and values. So let me start by saying what digital sovereignty is not.
Because there is the risk that this call for digital sovereignty in Europe is misunderstood. Digital sovereignty is not about creating barriers to the free flow of personal data. It is not about imposing data localisation, and keeping the data in some jurisdictions.
Digital sovereignty is mainly about empowering citizens and companies with choices. They are free to choose. They will choose the means to offer a good level of data protection for the customers or the citizens. So at the moment, unfortunately, because of the big dependence that the European Union has with some external service providers, our companies may not have a choice.
They will have to take whatever is in the market even if it is not compatible with our values and our roles. What we want to achieve is that there is more choice for our companies. So it doesn’t matter if the service provided is in Europe or elsewhere. What matters is that the service provider is compatible with our values and our laws.
So this is very important, because we do not want to stop the free flow. On the contrary, we think free flow is essential for trade and economy. We just want to empower our companies and citizens better than what we have at the moment.
Kohei:Yeah, that’s great to hear from you that free-flow of data based on protection meets also the requirements. We have to talk about it for the future, as this is a very important topic. I assume it. So the next question is on the speech you gave at the AI Summit. I think , the word “dignity” is a key word that you mentioned on the conference.
So I want to ask you about the digital humanism by design. So how can we implement “human dignity” into the technology and how can we go to the public to include this concept into the design?
- Why did you create “human dignity by design” concept?
Leonardo: Yes, for us, Europeans, but I’m sure it is the same for most countries in the world, Human dignity is the cornerstone of everything. In the European Union, we do not have a document that we call European Constitution. Unfortunately, it was not politically possible to name a document a European Constitution. But we have something very similar which is almost our Constitution, which is the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Article one of our Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is as our European Constitution, says, human dignity cannot be violated. We talk about human dignity even before we talk about the right to have a life. It’s so important for us this human dignity concept.
We want this concept to be embraced by the technology. That’s why I have invented this concept of the human dignity by design, mirroring the concept in data protection law, data protection by design, because of the new wave of technologies that we will have in the future. For example on artificial intelligence, we will need more than data protection by design to make technologies safe for individuals.
We will need to ensure human dignity that is at the core of these technologies. I like to say that what makes us human is our imperfections. So it is our feelings of love and compassion, our deep respect for other human beings, avoidance of discrimination, all these things that need to be in the technology.
So we need technologies that are more human and technologies that do not make us less human. Because this is the future of our society. We are embracing a new digital world which is great, full of potential but if the price we have to pay for this digital world is to make us less human, it is probably not worth it.
And I think we are paying a too big price. That’s why at the moment there are many people that are disconnecting from social media and from all these places. Because they feel that they are participating in something where there is not sufficiently human space. They are betraying the principles and values, so we have to be smarter than that.
We need to learn from the mistakes we have made for the last years, where we have seen deregulated tools in the internet already created big problems for our society.
There is no surprise that we are witnessing so much disinformation and so problematic polarization of our societies, because these tools that we have in the internet, were not designed with this concept of human dignity and respect, deep respect for individuals.
They were designed to maximize impact, to make videos viral, to make money, but they were never designed thinking if this was compatible with our values, our constitution, and the things that we consider close to our heart. So this is what we’re trying to say to the world from the European Union. Human dignity should be at the core of our technologies.
Kohei: Yeah, thank you. I totally agree and totally share the same opinion of been a human centric, and that it is a requirement for the technology. Of course, society should have an inclusive approach for human based results, as this concept is essential to create something new. So the next question is about the future strategy of the EDPS.
You mentioned on the YouTube video that you have three main pillars in the EDPS strategy 2020–2024; so what is the main focus to collaborate with other jurisdictions, such as in Asian countries?
Of course, as I’m living in Japan or other Asian countries interested in how the privacy regulation evolves. Also the US or other jurisdictions, they have their own privacy regulation. So what kind of collaboration you have as an EDPS right this moment?
- What do you expect with future collaboration?
Leonardo: Yes, something very good that we do here every time we inaugurate a new Supervisor is that in the first six months, we put out the plans for a five years mandate of our Supervisor and that’s what we did in the first half of 2020. That’s why we have our strategy published that you perfectly referred to.
Unfortunately, this time, we had one of these dark swans that affect humanity from time to time, we were confronted with COVID-19, we had to adapt a little bit our strategy to cover this issue that has been eating a lot of resources in our office because we have to accompany with data protection care, all the measures that were being imposed to fight the pandemic.
But in addition to this, our strategy for the next years focus on widespread surveillance. We consider this is a big problem that needs to be tackled, in particular when you apply artificial intelligence to this surveillance, that is why.
For example, we have asked for a prohibition of remote biometric identification in public spaces. This is one of our top priorities. The second priority is to join forces with all the regions that embrace our human centric standards to make this standard the future standard for humanity and not other standards that we are seeing that are not compatible with human dignity.
And the third priority which is a little bit more European, is the concept we already discussed of digital sovereignty to make Europe more sovereign when coming to the digital transformation.
The most important thing from the perspective of your audience, is the importance of international cooperation. For us, there is no point in doing anything if the European Union is not embraced by all the regions in the world because the world has become so small and everything is global.
So it’s completely useless to develop policies that apply only to our countries, these policies need to be spread and shared by other jurisdictions. That’s why we are investing so much in international cooperation. And one of the tools that we have developed for that is the tool of adequacy decisions.
And Japan. We have here the highest utmost respect and admiration for Japan. I mean, your society is so smart and well organised. So your government saw the need to get the adequacy decision by the European Commission, and now Japan is a leader on data protection in Asia and recently we saw also South Korea joining the club, which is great.
So for us, having more adequacy decisions is a priority. We hope we will have more. But in addition to this, there are other possibilities for international cooperation. For example, we are well aware of the efforts deployed by some countries to foster the APAC cross border privacy rules.
We are endorsing these efforts provided that they are not seen only or mainly from a trade perspective. They can be helpful for trade but the main reason for these tools is the protection of fundamental rights of individuals, let’s not forget what is the objective of all these tools.
Also, we are supporting other initiatives in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). For example, data free flow with trust initiative that we think is a great initiative that we support, because it fosters a very necessary discussion.
And also we have a global privacy assembly, which is the meeting of all data protection authorities in the world where we are very active. And we have been working closely with the Japanese Data Protection Authority on this topic for example, recently, in the working group that we have on artificial intelligence.
So all this is good but we need to do more. We need to do closer international cooperation with like-minded countries like Europe, United States, Japan. They need to work closer and our data protection authorities need also to cooperate in terms of enforcement to act really as a planet, not so much as regions fighting for their own interest.
And because this is like climate change, right? It is a global challenge. We will only be able to ensure a safe, digital future for our citizens if we all work together on this.
Kohei: Thank you. Yeah, it is great to hear from you. That kind of collaboration is the key to enhance the privacy baseline of the countries to come together.
So that is quite important to make a more strategic approach for data protection world. So lastly, I would like to ask you for any message for the listeners probably Japanese and to other data protection practitioners that are listening to this interview. I’m happy to be here and convey the message to all.
- Message to listeners
Leonardo: First of all, I want to thank you very much for the opportunity you have given me and the European Data Protection Supervisor to explain to our Japanese audience, our international audience, the vision that we have in the European Union for a safer digital future for humankind.
This is not something that we are doing only for European citizens. It’s a contribution of the European Union to the world. In this respect, the support and the active contribution of Japan, their companies and their citizens and their scholars is paramount.
Your society is highly advanced in many areas and having Japan joining these efforts is paramount for the success of this endeavour.
So, as soon as this COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, I think we should ensure closer cooperation with the Japanese data protection authorities and the Japanese government to make this human dignity by design, a real objective for the next decades, to have better and safer digital world for all of us.
Thank you that is a great message. And again I’m very appreciative and I’m very honored to talk with you in this moment. Even though we are in COVID times, we are in a remote connection and thus, we have powers to fight against it. So that was great to have a conversation with you, Leonardo, thank you for having this moment.
Leonardo: Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
Kohei: Thank you.
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