Privacy & GDPR#

RelataDB provides first-class data subject rights management: data subject access requests (DSAR), erasure (cryptographic and physical), consent registers, and retention policies.

Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)#

Export all data associated with a subject:

# CLI
relata dsar --subject user@example.com
 
# HTTP
curl "http://localhost:9090/gdpr/dsar?subject=user@example.com" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RELATA_BEARER_TOKEN"

The response includes every row across every type where the subject's identifier appears, plus the provenance chain for each row.

Erasure#

Cryptographic erasure#

The data root key (DRK) for a tenant is destroyed in the KMS. All data encrypted under that key becomes permanently unreadable — no row-by-row deletion needed. This is the fastest path for a full-tenant right-to-be-forgotten.

curl -X POST http://localhost:9090/gdpr/erase \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RELATA_BEARER_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"subject":"user@example.com","scope":"all"}'

Physical erasure#

For per-subject erasure, the system closes the subject's rows (valid_to = now) and removes them from all indexes (FTS, vector, graph, identity). Bi-temporal history is preserved for audit — the row's provenance chain survives, but the PII fields are cryptographically shredded.

Media erasure#

Face/voice biometric templates are removed from the searchable index, and media blobs are deleted from S3. This is critical for biometric data under GDPR Article 17.

Consent register#

Every query may carry a PURPOSE tag that is matched against a consent register:

PURPOSE 'marketing'
SELECT name, email FROM Person WHERE id = 'p1'

If the subject has not consented to 'marketing', the query returns zero rows for that subject. Consent is managed as governed rows and can be withdrawn at any time.

Retention policies#

Legal holds prevent retention enforcement on held data, even if the retention period has expired.

See also#

• Governance — PURPOSE, consent, and policy
• Security — encryption and KMS
• Multi-tenancy — per-tenant encryption keys