From 23 to 26 of September 2013, in the city of Warsaw, Poland, the 35th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners is held. The Conference is carrying out under the motto “A compass in turbulent world”. Authorities for data and privacy protection from all over the world, NGOs, academia and the business are presented. Representatives of the Bulgarian Commission for Personal Data Protection are Mariya Mateva and prof. Veselin Tsekov, members of the Commission.
The International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners Conference was established in 1979 and convenes once a year. In the recent years, the Conference has grown into a one week event, comprising an Open Session accessible to all privacy professionals, a Closed Session only accessible to data protection and privacy authorities, as well as several side meetings organized by international and non-governmental organizations.
The main conference program contains a variety of discussion panels that focus on the new challenges and modern principles in the privacy protection. The program of the event is complemented by numerous accompanying events – a seminar “Privacy: Back to the Future” organized by the Council of Europe, Microsoft’s workshop “Safety of personal data processing”, GPEN members meeting and others.
The conference is organized in three main sessions and one introductory session entitled "Privacy as a cultural value”. The main topics of the conference are “Reforms all over the world. Interoperability between the regions”, “Privacy and technology” and “Actors: perspectives, roles, interests”. The most extensive and detailed in numerous panels is the theme for the reforms and the interoperability. Issues, related to the mutual recognition between different data protection traditions, data protection and the global trade, criminal and administrative enforcement of data protection are discussed. Subject of debates are the data use within context and compatible purpose, developing tools for global compliance, privacy education in the digital world, big data and data analytics for development purposes. Privacy and cybersecurity, and assessing privacy risks to individuals are in the focus of the discussions.
Main plenary sessions are dedicated to the privacy ensuring and related technologies, as well as the roles and interests of the different stakeholders in this process. Prospects in the development of personal data protection ensuring in the modern high-tech, dynamic and diverse environment are outlined.
