The Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe has adopted an updated Recommendation to enhance the safeguarding of personal data and private life due to significant advancements in profiling technologies over the past decade. This revised recommendation is intended to be in line with the updated data protection Convention 108, also referred to as “Convention 108+.”
This recommendation stresses the importance of ensuring respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, including human dignity, privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination, social justice, cultural diversity, and democracy. These principles are to be upheld across both public and private sectors during all profiling activities.
Profiling is defined in the recommendation as any automated processing of personal data that might use machine learning algorithms, which involves evaluating personal aspects of an individual. This includes predicting or analyzing an individual’s job performance, economic status, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behavior, and even location.
The Committee of Ministers recommends the adoption, recognizing the potential for profiling techniques to affect individuals, often categorizing them without their awareness, which can lead to transparency issues and risks to human rights. This is especially concerning for vulnerable groups such as children.
To mitigate such risks, the Committee calls for the promotion and legal enforcement of the “privacy by design” principle throughout the entire data processing lifecycle, which includes the application of privacy-enhancing technologies. Furthermore, it encourages measures to prevent the development and utilization of technologies designed to illicitly bypass technological measures aimed at protecting privacy.