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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Is it Personal data? Solving the gordian knot of anonymisation

Résumé

The concept of personal data is pivotal to understand the scope of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since data protection regulations and directives were adopted, national courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had to determine whether some data like IP addresses are personal. Courts' rulings are often based on the possibility to re-identify individuals from the datasets under dispute. The different views adopted by Courts over the years do not always reach the same conclusions, which is source of legal uncertainties. This is especially the case when data controllers are using data protection techniques like pseudonymisation and anonymisation. Recently, the ruling of the CJEU in the SRB vs EDPS case challenged the stance adopted by data protection authorities concerning the distinction between pseudonymisation and anonymisation. Data protection watchdogs consider that pseudonymized data are always personal data. The dictum of the court in the SRB vs EDPS case is that pseudonymised data can be considered as anonymised and thus non-personal data depending on the re-identification capability of the data holder. This creates legal uncertainties as the legal qualification of data that have been subject to data protection techniques. In this paper, the authors question the extent of the definition of personal data and how it applies to data protection techniques such as pseudonymisation and anonymisation. Eventually, they emphasise that this issue is challenging with regard to the protection of data within the EU borders and beyond.
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Dates et versions

hal-04609238 , version 1 (12-06-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04609238 , version 1

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Alexandre Lodie, Cedric Lauradoux. Is it Personal data? Solving the gordian knot of anonymisation. Privacy Symposium 2024, Jun 2024, Venise, Italy. pp.1-18. ⟨hal-04609238⟩
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