Enhancing Transparency of Data Processing and Data Subject’s Rights through Technical Tools: the PIMS and PDS Solution

The continuous processing of personal data has surely decreased user awareness over the usage of information relating to them. It is worth the lack of technical means aimed at helping who personify datafication targets to interface with data flow, as well as to practically exercise the rights which have been recognised to data subjects by the GDPR. Transparency Enhancing Tools (TET), as subtypes of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET), pave the way for a renovated approach of data sovereignty against the deviation of informational capitalism while making users have better insight into data processing. On the other hand, the respect of the obligations set out in the GDPR could be better achieved by information society services, as well as the company’s reputation may benefit from adopting technical measures in line with the principle of transparency. In this respect, Privacy Information Management Systems (PIMS) and Personal Data Stores (PDS) could be seen as technological solutions for balancing the opposite interests of the actors of the digital economy (i.e., professionals and consumers) and, more broadly, put law and technology together not only in relation to data protection by design and by default but also for the development of technology in a human-centred manner.