Know Your Privacy Laws

Being well-informed about the data protection regulations in your own jurisdiction can be a significant asset for your personal and collective battles to improve privacy, for yourself and for others.

Unfortunately, many people lucky enough to live in jurisdictions benefiting from such regulations often aren't aware of them, or of how to use them.

Here's what to look for when searching information about your local privacy laws:

Where is the data subject

For most privacy regulations, legal protections will be applicable to data subjects who are citizens or reside in a specific region or country.

What is a data subject?

Different laws might use different terms for this. Sometimes, a regulation might simply refer to a person, an individual, a consumer, a patient, or a customer.

Other times, the equivalent expression used will be a data subject.

A data subject is simply anyone from whom personal information is collected by an organization. Data subject will be used as an umbrella term on this page.

Contrary to what many believe, it's generally your local regulations that protect you, regardless of where the organization collecting your personal data is located (in addition, organizations are also subjected to their own local regulations).

Organizations that meet the data subject's local privacy law criteria are legally bound to comply with the laws of each region or country where their data subjects are residing (i.e. where they are conducting business).

There are a lot of nuances and regional variations to this, but in general you should focus on where the data subject is residing.

Finding your local regulations

If your jurisdiction is protected by one or more privacy laws, it should be relatively easy to find this information online. Privacy Guides will soon publish a tool facilitating this task.

In the meantime, you can simply use a trustworthy search engine and look for keywords with your location (be specific about country + states/provinces/region) and "privacy laws" or "data protection regulations."

Always make sure to find a result that is from an official government source.

Beware of AI-generated information!

Be careful to research this without using an automated chatbot or AI-generated information. These tools can have a high error rate, and the information displayed might not be reliable. Be sure to find the official government documentation in order to get the proper legal information.

While researching about your privacy protections, keep in mind that:

• You might benefit from multiple privacy laws at once. For example, many regions have separate regulations specifically designed to protect health data, children's data, or employees' data.

• You might benefit from protections by different government levels at once, such as federal, provincial, state level, etc. Look for them all!

• Your region might unfortunately not be protected by any significant privacy regulations at this time. If this is the case for you: It's time to contact your local representatives and advocate for a local privacy law!

What to look for in a privacy law

Once you've found the official governmental documentation describing the data protection regulation that applies to your region, read it carefully to find:

• Who is protected by the law, and in which situations?

• Which types of organizations are bound to comply with the law?

• What are your data subject rights? (Right to Delete? Right to Access? Right to Opt-out?)

• Does the law include special protections for specific types of sensitive data?

• Which types of data might be exempt from the law?

• Which entity is responsible for enforcing the law?

• What is the process to file a complaint?

More resources

• Map of data protection and privacy legislation worldwide (UN Trade and Development)

• The future of privacy: How governments shape your digital life (Privacy Guides)

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