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The importance of sudo (rsync)

Adding sudo prevents "permission denied" errors if the blockage is caused by a lack of read or write privileges on files and folders. However, how you apply sudo depends on whether you are running rsync locally or over a remote SSH connection. [1, 2, 3]
Local Transfers
Put sudo at the very front of your command: sudo rsync -av /source/ /destination/.
This runs the entire process with root permissions, bypassing local file restrictions. [1, 2, 3]
    Remote Transfers (via SSH)
    Typing sudo rsync locally only elevates privileges on your local machine. If the permission error happens on the remote server, you must tell rsync to invoke sudo on the remote side using the --rsync-path flag: [1, 2, 3, 4]
    Command: rsync -av -e ssh --rsync-path="sudo rsync" /local/path/ user@remote:/remote/path/
    Important: The remote user account must be configured for passwordless sudo (NOPASSWD) for rsync in the remote /etc/sudoers file. Otherwise, rsync will hang or fail when it tries to prompt you interactively for a password.

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