Balancing Privacy and Public Interest
In an increasingly digitised world where data is as valuable as it is prolific, balancing the rights of the individual with corporate interests is a nebulous task for businesses of all sizes. But what about when the entity seeking that data is the government?
‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,’ – Eric Schmidt, CEO, Alphabet Inc.
The issue of data privacy has been an increasingly prevalent one for corporates and, subsequently, their general counsel in recent years. When the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation entered into force in 2016 ahead of its 2018 implementation, businesses the world around were put on notice: the rights of the individual with respect to personal data – its collection, storage and use – were now subject to stringent protections designed to safeguard the end user against corporate interests.
