Nothing on the Internet is really free. If users do not pay in euros for a service, then users do pay with their personal data and privacy. In this way, companies rake in large amounts of data about their users. Personal data is valuable because it allows companies to create a detailed profile about someone. This allows them to approach people in a targeted manner, for example.
The government also processes personal data of everyone in the Netherlands. For example, municipalities keep personal data of citizens in the Basisregistratie Personen (BRP). When someone gets married, has a child or moves house, the municipality records this. The law struggles with the phenomenon of data. For example, there is often disagreement about who actually "owns" certain (personal) data. State Secretary Knops has informed the House of Representatives about the possibility of regulating in the Civil Code (BW) citizens' ownership of their personal data with the government. Is this the solution?
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG), citizens have several rights to influence the processing of their personal data. For example, citizens have the right to inspect their own personal data and the right to correct inaccurate/incomplete data. For citizens, ownership of personal data is often linked to this control. The commitment of State Secretary Knops is therefore to give him or her as much control over that data as possible.
One point to note is that this control is not or cannot be unlimited. The fact that the citizen does not have full control is primarily related to the fact that the government needs that data to carry out its legal duties. The government must have sufficient guarantees that those data are accurate, current, available and reliable. For that reason, for example, a citizen cannot prohibit the government from recording his or her name, address and date of birth. Only if such data is incorrectly administered or factually altered can it be corrected.
Currently, there is no legal ownership of personal data because property law does not address it. The law states that property is the most comprehensive right a person can have over a thing. And things are those susceptible to human control. Obvious examples of things are a chair, a house or a piece of land. Personal data is not a thing and therefore does not fall under this concept.
State Secretary Knops points out that it seems logical to consider the citizen as the owner of the personal data. After all, the data are about him or her. According to the State Secretary, however, it is not a good idea to make legal ownership of personal data possible. One reason for this is that control over one's own data cannot be unlimited.
It is much better to protect the rights and duties of a citizen's personal data in other ways as much as possible, according to the secretary of state. This is possible, for example, through the rights of inspection and correction included in the AVG. In the policy letter Regie op Gegevens, the rights and obligations laid down in the AVG are fleshed out and expanded. Not only with regard to inspection and correction, but also one-time provision of data, and being able to share one's own data digitally with third parties.
See also news release Room letter gives clarity: citizen not owner of personal data
This article can also be found in the AVG file
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