I trust you’ve heard about the new "GDPR" edict recently pronounced by the savages in Brussels. In case you haven’t, here’s the skinny: it stands for "General Data Protection Regulation," which means that it’s exactly as communist as the acronym "GDPR" makes you think it is. The long and short is that the European Union — read: a bunch of feckless bureaucrats in Brussels — now asserts that it has the authority to control exactly what data literally every entity in the world collects and what is done with it. Because, you know, safety and that.
Apparently, the level of monstrous totalitarianism on display here just isn’t sufficiently obvious to disabuse fashionable libertarians of the notion that arrogating huge amounts of power to a tiny cabal of criminals will be just aces for freedom and liberty.
GDPR was designed to replace the previous law known as the Data Protection Directive and it aims to create a single set of rules for European Union member states. It aims to give consumers more control over the personal data companies collect about them.
As long as said "consumers" happen to be lawmakers in European countries, that’s exactly what it does! Everybody else, of course, ends up with far less control, since you’re a fool if you think you actually have any say in what your overlords decide to do, and now you don’t even have the option of taking your business elsewhere if you don’t like Company X’s information gathering policy.
To wit: if you’re anything like me — and you know you are — you’ve spent the last week being bombarded with unsolicited, undesired e-mails from every company you’ve ever done business with, since the new EU regulations required it. I’m sure that, like me, you positively reveled in your newfound level of "control" over this legally-mandated spam bomb.
Not only does the legislation affect organizations based within the EU itself, but it also applies to companies outside of the EU if they provide services to – or monitor the activities of – EU citizens. As you can see, it’s going to have a major impact felt around the world.
It’s a true fact: it is literally impossible for a computer not to "monitor the activities of" anybody who interacts with it. That is absolutely, fundamentally how they operate. So, yes, this new regulation very explicitly does apply to absolutely every web site ever made, along with every company capable of receiving e-mail. Every company. Everywhere. In the entire world. Can’t you just smell the freedom, comrades?
The GDPR is one of the latest EU parliamentary measures designed to protect personal data as much as possible.
Perhaps just the faintest hint of credulity oozing out of this communist claptrap, yes?
The EU Charter itself states that protection of personal data is a fundamental right associated with protection of one’s natural person.
Which is obviously nonsense. "Personal data" is a crusty bit of doublespeak designed to slop a veneer of made-up, trendy "rights" over the top of some genuine, authentic rights that are being violated.
To wit: most of us, I presume, attended government high school (like it or not). In most government high schools, students receive a yearbook, which contains pictures of all their classmates and various activities and so forth. Assume you and I were in the same class in high school, say, twenty years ago. Now I publish a declaration saying that I wish for all my "personal data" from high school to be deleted. Do you have an obligation to dust off your yearbook, go through it page-by-page, and remove all pictures of me and all mention of my name or achievements? Obviously not; it’s your yearbook, and you may do as you please with it. Indeed, not only would your lack of compliance with my demand not be a criminal act, but any attempt on my part to force you to comply certainly would. Yet this is what the fiction of "personal data" stands on its head: the obvious, irrefutable fact that data is the property of its owner, not of its subject. You’ve no more "right" to control what data people gather about you and what they do with it than you have a "right" to control what people say and think about you. Indeed, they are exactly the same thing.
If we’re not careful, pretty soon there will be laws mandating that we address crazy people in specific crazy ways.
While American laws tend to be in favor of businesses more so than consumers, the EU takes a consumer-first approach…
Make no bones about it; the EU cares a lot about protecting consumer privacy and they always have.
It’s like this article was somehow written in the 1950s. Does Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem just not exist on the planet you people live on? Has the entire school of Public Choice ceased to exist while I wasn’t looking? For pity’s sake, here we are, on the tail end of literally a hundred years of failed central-planning experiments, and people are still so all-fired clueless as to write articles explicitly assuming that government officials implement "the will of the people" rather than catering to their own interests. It’s almost enough to make one think that all the governments of the world have spent the entirety of that time deliberately brainwashing everybody into believing this nonsense.
A key focus of the legislation is strengthening the conditions of consent. This means that companies are no longer able to get your data out of you by using vague and confusing statements.
"Strengthening the conditions of consent." Is there an annual George Orwell Award given to the most awe-inspiring example of newspeak? If there is, that should win it, and then they should retire the award because that’s going to win again every year.
I’m sure we all remember what happened the last time the EU "strengthened the conditions of consent:" the ubiquitous "HAY THIS SITE USES COOKIES" popups we all know and love. Don’t those make you feel empowered with choices? I wonder how the new regulations will choicepower to the people!
Users should be able to consent to individual things individually, rather than being presented with a list of things and then being asked to consent to everything at once.
Oh, aces. Instead of one huge wall of text everybody scrolls past without reading, now we’ll have to endure several. That’s what I call protecting consumer privacy!
Consumers will also be given more control over their user data. They will have the right to access the personal information that companies store on them and find out what the data is being used for and where it is being kept. It also gives users the right to be forgotten.
What did I tell you? The "right" to have the government hit other people over the head. Who in turn have the "right" to hit you over the head right back. Divide et impera indeed.
That means that you have the right to ask people to delete the information they have on you and prevent third parties from getting access to it.
No, you already have the right to ask people to do whatever you please. What you don’t have is the spurious "right" to compel people to pay huge amounts of money to the government if they displease you.
What? Did I say "pay huge amounts of money to the government?" That can’t possibly be what it’s about. It’s about justice and fairness and that!
There will be some potentially major fines associated with breaking the rules of the GDPR. Organizations that breach the rules will be subject to fines of up to 4% of their annual global turnover or 20 million euros (around $25 million), whichever figure is higher.
See? Just a measly little $25 million for the dread crime of failing to "notify their data protection authority about any breaches within 72 hours of them becoming aware it happened. [all the sic in the world]" That’s clearly the minimum amount necessary to ensure the social good, and I guess those selfless custodians of public weal will just have to accept it.
There are also other problems, such as the freedom of expression.
Well, sure, just minor things like that.
Laws built around the freedom of expression prevent this right to be forgotten from extending to news articles.
Which is one of the problems with phony government "rights." All rights are property rights, you goofbags. When you invent magical "rights" to invade and abstract the property of others, there’s no possible way to avoid conflicts with actual rights. This would be because of what words mean. You remember words? They do still mean things.
Also note that the problem this point of light sees here is that the freedom of expression limits the new right to silence people.
Don’t be too worried about the changes though… of course, it never helps to hire a data protection officer to ensure complete compliance and have the right people ready when they are needed.
Don’t be too worried — just hire a whole bunch more useless, rent-seeking bureaucrats. I’m sure that’s really going to help the "little guy" stick it to Facebook and Google — after all, it’s no problem for the Bumbling Bees Commentary and Crap Joke Corporation to hire a "data protection officer," but how will Facebook ever afford it?
What amazes me is all the libertommunists in the comments talking about what a great victory for liberty this is. Apparently they’ve all forgotten what Ludwig von Mises wrote in the conclusion to his seminal Bureaucracy:
The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!
That or they’re all a bunch of nitwit commies who haven’t really read anything, and just want to force rich people to gibsdemdat. But what are the chances?