Brazil has rapidly emerged as a global leader in data protection, managing to implement its first comprehensive data protection law, founding its first national data protection organization, amending its constitution to include the right to data protection, and launching enforcement, all in less than five years.
Miriam Wimmer, in her role as director of the Brazilian Data Protection Authority (ANPD), was at the forefront of many of these achievements, guiding the country through the development and implementation of its nationwide data protection framework.
“Her leadership at the Brazilian Data Protection Authority has positioned Brazil as a global leader in consumer privacy protections,” said Fordham Law Dean Joseph Landau, who introduced Wimmer as she gave the annual Reidenberg Lecture at Fordham Law.
In her lecture, Wimmer discussed the challenges facing data protection regulation in Brazil and in countries around the world, including questions about how to regulate social media platforms, issues related to hate speech, and the impact of new technologies like AI.
Despite having a fairly high digital inclusion rate— 89% of Brazilians are internet users—there was a critical lack of standardization around data protection issues in the country before the ANPD was introduced, according to Wimmer.
“Brazil is a country that is still in the process of building a culture of data protection. So unlike the European scenario, where we have decades of data protection laws and court decisions and [Data Protection Authority] decisions, in Brazil, everything is still very new,” she said. “We are building our understanding of the themes as we move along without a long history of jurisprudence or administrative decisions that we can take a look at when we need to interpret new phenomena or business models in view of our legislation.”
Wimmer’s lecture was followed by a discussion moderated by Fordham Law Professor Olivier Sylvain and featuring panelists Pablo A. Palazzi, a partner at Allende & Brea; Ben Wiseman, associate director in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the Federal Trade Commission; and Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, vice president for global privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum.
The Reidenberg Lecture, now in its fifth year, honors the legacy of the late Professor Joel Reidenberg, a pioneer in information law whose work laid the foundation for many of the data protection regulations we have today, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, a forerunner to Brazil’s regulations. The event was presented by the Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy, which was founded by Reidenberg in 2005.
“[Reidenberg] put Fordham on the map and at the center of these issues, particularly with regard to the European Union and South America, with a legacy that continues to reverberate in the academic world and policy circles,” said Landau.