FINES IMPOSED BY THE INAI DURING THE FIRST HALF OF 2016 EXCEED 50 MILLION MEXICAN PESOS
The National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data ("INAI" for its acronym in Spanish), informed that during the first half of 2016 it has initiated 30 Penalty Imposition Procedures against companies and/or individuals who violated 'the Federal Law on Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties' (the "Law").
As a result of these procedures, the INAI has imposed 22 economic penalties for a total of 50,611,145 Mexican pesos, allocated mainly in the financial and insurance sector, followed by information in mass media and finally by the educational services sector.
COMPANIES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PROCESSING OF THE PERSONAL DATA OF THEIR EMPLOYEES
On July, the INAI informed that during the course of a Protection of Rights Procedure, it ruled on the exception of "exclusively personal use with no purposes of disclosure or commercial use" established by the Law, since the company upon which the procedure was initiated argued that the Law and its Regulations were not applicable to it.
The INAI, after the corresponding analysis, determined that there is no 'personal use' when personal data is used for the purpose of fulfilling an obligation resulting from a legal relationship, as in the case of an employment relationship, and that the personal data of an employee and/or former employee should be processed according to the principles and obligations established in the Law. Moreover, the Institute restated that the owners of personal data are data subjects (as opposed to the employer), in this case employees, who have the authority to decide who, for what purposes, and how their data is processed.
INAI PUBLISHES NEW GUIDE FOR THE SECURE DELETION OF PERSONAL DATA
On July 14, the INAI presented and published a new guide, the "Guide to Securely Delete Personal Data". This guide recommends the use by data controllers of methods that ensure the secure and definitive deletion of the personal data that is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, and that is contained in documents, files, electronic media or devices.
Some of the methods the INAI suggests using, depending on the type of support, are: paper shredders, over-writing, use of chemicals, and de-magnetization. Hiring specialized service providers is also widely recommended by INAI.
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