Asymmetries and Power
New frontiers of digital law
Objective: to map and analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the adoption of technologies based on personal data processing and to focus on pervasive personal data processing practices in the field of public security and criminal prosecution.
Duration: 2020-2021
Status: Concluído
Supporter(s): Open Society Foundations
Description
The field of public security presents deep complexities for the guarantee of fundamental rights, in a scenario of violations of rights, structural racism, and inequalities. In this context, Brazil has been facing major debates that include facial recognition in public security, the need for a General Law for the Protection of Personal Data for public security and criminal investigations, and a broad reform of police administrative law concerning the life cycle of data, especially about photographic recognition in police stations.
Since 2019, Data Privacy Brasil Research Association has been working on the digital rights and public safety agenda, seeking to expand the grammar of fundamental rights in the field and to promote connections with criminal procedure, criminal law, and public security activists.
The project New Frontiers of Digital Rights aims to expand these connections and consists of three phases. The first phase discussed the standard structure of a general law on the processing of personal data for public security purposes, in line with the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), and resulted in a Technical Note that informed the process of the Justice Commission appointed to deal with the topic. The second phase seeks to understand the legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic on public and private surveillance potentials and personal data sharing projects using emerging technologies, which resulted in the Viral Data project. The third phase of the project focuses on the data’s life cycle and protection in the field of criminal investigation and public security, with special attention to cases of arrests for evidence of photographic recognition.