Argentina set to pass new data protection law.
LATIN LAWYER
Argentina’s executive branch has presented its Congress with a draft data protection bill in a bid to align the country’s data protection standards with the GDPR.
The bill, if approved, will replace the current law, which came into force in 2000.
The draft bill, presented to Congress on 19 September, makes a notable change to the scope of the law: while the current legislation makes a distinction between data that belongs to individuals and corporations, the draft bill applies only to personal data.
According to Marcos Santivañez from Bruchou, Fernández Madero & Lombardi in Buenos Aires, this is to reflect the now widespread view that personal data handled by corporations still belongs – even indirectly – to individuals.
The draft bill also changes the way penalties will be calculated: violations will now incur a fine of up to 500 times the minimum living wage – a method introduced to mitigate the potential impact of inflation, Santivañez noted. “It is very difficult to amend a law every time an amount becomes too low due to inflation. We are learning from our mistakes.”
The draft bill calls for data handlers to appoint a data protection officer, whose responsibilities would include the development of data protection policies and supervising compliance with the proposed law.
In addition, the bill also expands individual data rights to include a right of data portability.
The drafting process began in August 2016 in a series of working meetings that brought together academics, and the public and private sectors; they then opened the bill to public comment in early 2017.
Florencia Rosati, partner at Beccar Varela in Buenos Aires, said that this bill was “a necessary step” for Argentine data protection law. “Our current legislation is taken almost directly from the original Spanish data protection legislation, and since Europe has adapted their legislation with the introduction of the GDPR, it is necessary that our legislation had to adapt itself in order to maintain the adequacy standard that we have had since 2003.”
Argentina was the first Latin American country to implement a general data protection law in 1995, and the first non-European country to be deemed to have “adequate” data protection legislation.
Seguir leyendo:
