Individual rights are something of great importance in everybody’s life. No matter who you are, where you live, or your financial situation, everyone has access to their own individual rights.
One of the aims of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to empower individuals and give them control over their personal data, which is exactly what individual rights are for.
This article will discuss all the main individual rights, so you can become more knowledgeable about this subject.
Universal Declaration Of Human Rights
We all know about human rights and how they are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, right? In the UK, human rights are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998. But they are not the same as individual rights under the GDPR.
Human rights are based on extremely vital principles of life such as dignity, fairness, respect and equality. They protect you in your everyday life regardless of who you are, where you live in the world and how you chose to live your life. They essentially give us power and enable us to speak up and to challenge poor treatment from any public authority.
Who Has To Comply With The Human Rights Act?
Technically speaking everyone, but the act is mainly targeted towards public authorities.
They must follow the Human Rights Act by respecting and protecting all your human rights, unless there’s a law that prevents it. It states that they must act in a way that is compatible with your human rights, and if not, you may be able to take action under the Act.
What Do Individual Rights Mean?
On the other hand, individual rights can vary from one country to another and may even be known by a different name. In the UK, individual rights are covered by the GDPR and their aim is to empower individuals and give them control over their personal data.
Examples Of Individual Rights In A Sentence
The term ‘individual rights’ is not something that you hear in a sentence every day. That can make it tricky to talk about when the topic comes up, or when you are trying to inform someone about the subject.
For example, you can use the term itself within a sentence such as:
- “In processing personal data, the individual rights of data subjects must be protected”; or
- “In the interest of the protection of the individual rights, information is only given to the former persecutees, or to their close relatives”.
Or if you are talking about specific individual rights, you can go into further detail such as:
- If a patient is diagnosed by a doctor as suffering from a particular condition, but it is later proved that this is not the case, then they may wish to have their records rectified. In this case, they can use their Right to Rectification to request this.
- A person previously worked for a company and has now left. They put in a request under the Right of Erasure for their old employer to delete all their perusal data from their systems. But upon review, the organisation knows that they need to process the personal data to comply with their legal obligation to HMRC. Therefore they can refuse the request to erase the individual’s data.
List Of Individual Rights
The UK GDPR provides the following rights for all individuals:
- The right to be informed: this is a key transparency requirement under the GDPR and means that all individuals have the right to be informed about the collection and use of their personal data.
- Right of access: this right entitles individuals to have the right to access and receive a copy of their personal data, and other supplementary information. It is commonly referred to as a subject access request or ‘SAR’ and they cannot be charged for requesting this.
- Right to rectification: this right makes it possible for individuals to have inaccurate personal data rectified, or completed if it is incomplete. This can be done either verbally or in writing, and organisations usually have up to one month to comply with the request.
- Right to erasure: this is a right whereby individuals can request to have some, or all, of their data, erased. It is important to note that there are some specific circumstances where the right to erasure does not apply, and a request may be denied.
- Right to restrict processing: in certain circumstances, an individual can make a request in writing or verbally for the restriction or suppression of their personal data. This means that the organisation is allowed to store personal data, but not use it.
- Right to data portability: this right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data easily from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way, without affecting its usability. All requests for data portability are considered on a case-by-case basis and only applies to information that an individual has provided to an organisation.
- Right to object: Any individual has the right to object to the processing of their information at any time. An objection may be in relation to all of the personal data that is held about an individual or certain parts of it, and only applies in certain circumstances.
- Rights related to automated decision making including profiling: this right has provision both when making a decision solely by automated means without any human involvement (automated individual decision-making), as well as during the automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain aspects about an individual (profiling).
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