The General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD) is everywhere. Since its approval, companies, governments and third sector entities have been seeking to adapt to its terms and break with the true Wild West that has always marked the (mis)use of personal data in Brazil.
There is still a long way to go for the country to have a true culture of data protection, but the attention that the issue is attracting is already a sign of change. Perhaps because it is becoming increasingly clear that the future of the economy depends on the intelligent use of data, which are often personal.
No wonder there is so much talk about big data today. Each click on a website, each move around the city or likes on a social network is a window that can be explored by different agents for the most different purposes.
This was not the world of the late 1990s. There was no LGPD, nor the technologies that today so challenge law enforcement. At that time, the concern with personal data was aimed at data processing centers, at “registrations, files or records” of consumers (just to use the language of the Consumer Protection Code).
The lawyer and professor Danilo Doneda, since then, served as a link between the discussions, which were still in their infancy in Brazil, and the growing concern with the processing of personal data, which was beginning to be regulated in a more specific way in Europe.
After spending a season working directly with Professor Stefano Rodotà, at the Data Protection Authority in Italy, Danilo went on to teach at different universities in Brazil.
In 2006, he launched the book “From Privacy to Personal Data Protection”, the result of his doctoral thesis at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and recognized as one of the most complete works on the subject in Brazil. In the following years, he engaged in discussions for the creation of a Marco Civil da Internet, which would come to fruition in 2014.
But it was the struggle to modernize Brazilian rules on data protection that motivated his trajectory. Having worked at the Consumer Defense Secretariat of the Ministry of Justice, Danilo has dedicated himself to the creation of a bill on the subject since 2010, when the first public consultation on the subject was held.
Present at the most important seminars and courses on data protection in the last decade, Doneda was a key player in translating the innovations contained in the European regulation on data protection (GDPR) into the bill that ended up being approved by the National Congress.
When it is said that Brazilian law was inspired by European legislation, it is almost a sublimation of the motives and people who left their fingerprints in this movement.
With the LGPD in force, Danilo was appointed to the National Council for Data Protection and Privacy and served on several support committees for the drafting of legislative documents, such as the General Data Protection Law project dedicated to the public security sectors and criminal investigation, in addition to the proposed replacement for the regulation of artificial intelligence in Brazil.
Owner of vast erudition and a peculiar sense of humor, Danilo made a collection of friends, students and admirers. The road to building and enforcing a data protection law in a country like Brazil is not a one-way street. Traveling to all corners of the world, Danilo was able to bring the Brazilian experience to an international audience, as well as discover what is best done on the subject abroad.
The protection of personal data may seem like an abstract topic for someone to want to dedicate their entire professional life to. When one understands that safeguarding data means protecting people from violence, discrimination and all kinds of abuse, coming from the Public Power or the private sector, it becomes easier to understand the passion that Danilo devoted to the subject.
If today there are so many specialists in the protection of personal data in Brazil, it is deeply saddening to know that the greatest of them is no longer with us. Professor Danilo Doneda passed away this Sunday (4), at the age of 52.
Danilo was a great friend, with a soft heart and hard opinions. A lover of Italian music and books, he has an unusual ability to pack gifts for his three children into a suitcase. He will be missed only by the number of students, friends, family and admirers who will carry on his example.
