When it comes to privacy and data protection compliance the principles are the same; you need to understand what really matters and go all-in on that. It’s the difference between the false sense of security that comes from doing the wrong things efficiently and getting the important stuff done effectively.
Whatever about how that interaction between public and private plays out in our lives, privacy means that the choice is a personal one for each of us to make.
What though of our daily interactions? It is likely that many of them are made not with people but with, or via, devices, or through the internet of things.
Leaving records, that form data. Data that can be amassed and form great value; though not to us, unlike the valuable memories I have of those daily trips with my grandfather.
When we chose free, what we didn’t realise is that this incentivised the creation of a new business model. One in which the most valuable assets were personal data and privacy, which were often inadvertently traded without really appreciating or understanding the implications.
What if we transformed how we marketed our businesses from something that sees compliance as a nuisance to something that places respect in our customers?
That data that we always felt it was safer to have rather than not may actually represent a serious liability; should we be holding it at all?
Unusually for a lawyer, I came to data protection and privacy via marketing.
One of my first jobs was working for my aunt Margot in a little hotel she and her husband Colm ran in Dublin when I was a teenager.
Growing up, it strikes me that the invocation of God in our everyday language at home was incredibly pervasive.
Privacy it is said is the right to be left alone. But it can also represent the circumstances that enable us to overcome loneliness.
Often times creativity or knowledge-work is put down to a requirement for inspiration, or natural brilliance or some kind of muse, a source of ideas.
My path to the practice area of data protection and privacy which I focus on in my practice and my business today has been a winding one.
My path to the practice area of data protection and privacy which I focus on in my practice and my business today has been a winding one.
One of the things you could never get away from in that small community was that everyone knew who you were…everything was pretty well visible to all.
It would be a great job except for the clients!
That’s one of the old saws among lawyers; I’m sure it’s common to many professions and trades.
The rights of individuals are not absolute, my rights do not trump yours. (Other than, perhaps, to me!)
I’ve mentioned before how I came to privacy and data protection as a business owner rather than as a lawyer.
I run; or at least I try to, badly…
And as with most middle-aged men, my running efforts seem to be punctuated by various, how shall I put this diplomatically, “complications”. Lately injury has been bothering me, or a general issue with my ankles/feet/legs/lower body (it’s kind of non-specific) that leaves me hobbling about like an old wreck.
I was fortunate to grow up in the same small community in which I now live and from which I work (though as it happens the community which I serve is now a vast global one). It is on the South coast of Ireland in west cork, a beautiful and friendly place in which I am privileged to live and now raise my own family.
I started studying law in University College Cork in the first week of October 1990; I was 18. Law had never really been a passion of mine, more something that I drifted into, and I had very little (read “no real”) idea of what to expect.