Data Privacy Brasil debates Memory of LGPD at global meeting

Last Friday (05/29), the Data Privacy Brasil Research Association participated in the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association. The meeting would be held in Denver (USA). With Covid-19, the meeting was completely transferred to a virtual environment. This was the first virtual meeting since the founding of the LSA in 1964.

The theme of the 2020 meeting was “Rule and Resistance”. According to the seminar organizers, it is crucial that socio-legal studies are dedicated to the way that resistance is used not only against the rules, but, especially in authoritarian contexts, through adherence to democratic rules and agreements. The annual meeting committee was chaired by Jonathan Klaaren (Wits University) and Anna-Maria Marshall (University of Illinois College of Law). The association’s executive committee consists of Penelope Andrews (New York Law School), Kim Lane Scheppele (Princeton University), Ron Levi (University of Toronto) and Howard Erlanger (University of Wisconsin).

The directors of the Data Privacy Brasil Research Association, Bruno Bioni and Rafael Zanatta, presented the article “Stronger Together? Tactical Alliances and Conflicts Between Activists and Private Firms in the Drafting of the Brazilian Data Protection Law (2017-2018)”. The article was based on the “Memory of LGPD” project, which generated more than 700 minutes of interviews with key actors in the construction of the General Data Protection Law.

As argued in the article by Bioni and Zanatta, the history of the LGPD shows not only a complex democratic process, with public consultations and open negotiation procedures, but also an unusual tactical alliance between business groups and digital rights activists, who abandoned conflicting positions in favor of a common goal of passing the legislation. The article was presented by Zanatta and had comments from Jeffrey Omari, from Gonzaga University School of Law, and Laura Mateczun, from University of Maryland.

The article was included in the section “Technology, Citizenship and Governance”, mediated by Sarah Lageson, professor at Rutgers University and author of the book Digital Punishment: Privacy, Stigma & the Harms of Data-driven Criminal Justice. The articles presented in this section analyzed specific questions about the post-9/11 surveillance regime in the USA, the social credit system in China and its algorithmic governance model, levels of cybersecurity preparedness in the US public power and the contribution for the global model of Internet governance through the Marco Civil da Internet.

One of Data Privacy Brasil’s goals for this year is to expand the international repercussion of its projects, including the history of the General Data Protection Law. In 2020, the Memory of LGPD web-documentary will be subtitled in English, expanding the target audience of the Observatory on Privacy and Data Protection project. The article presented at the Law & Society Association will be submitted to an international journal.