Watch it, Facebook: new EU data rules may have broad impact
Watch it, Facebook: new EU data rules may have broad
impact
By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press 26 March 2018
LONDON (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is promising
to do a better job protecting user data following reports that a political
consultant misused the personal information of millions of the company's
subscribers. The fact is, European regulators are already forcing him to do so.
A similar data breach in the future could make Facebook
liable for fines of more than $1.6 billion under the European Union's new
General Data Protection Regulation, which will be enforced from May 25. The
rules, approved two years ago, also make it easier for consumers to give and
withdraw consent for the use of their data and apply to any company that uses
the data of EU residents, no matter where it is based.
The law is the latest attempt by EU regulators to rein in
mostly American tech giants who they blame for avoiding tax, stifling
competition and encroaching on privacy rights. European analysts say GDPR is
the most important change in data privacy regulation in a generation as they
try to catch up with all the technological advances since 1995, when the last
comprehensive European rules were put in place. The impact is likely to be felt
across the Atlantic as well.
"For those of us who hold out no hope that our
government will stand up for our rights, we are grateful to Europe," said
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor at the University of Virginia who studies
technology and intellectual property. "I have great hopes that GDPR will
serve as a model for ensuring that citizens have dignity and autonomy in the
digital economy. I wish we had the forethought to stand up for the citizen's
rights in 1998 (the start of Google), but I'll settle for 2018."
The U.S. has generally taken a light touch approach to
regulating internet companies, with concerns about stifling the technology-fed
economic boom derailing President Barack Obama's 2012 proposal for a privacy
bill of rights. But Europe has been more aggressive.
EU authorities have in recent years taken aim at Google's
dominance among internet search engines and demanded back taxes from Apple and
Amazon. The European Court of Justice in 2014 recognized "the right to be
forgotten," allowing people to demand search engines remove information
about them if they can prove there's no compelling reason for it to remain.
Now data protection is in the crosshairs of the 28-nation
bloc, where history has made the right to privacy a fundamental guarantee. Nazi
Germany's use of personal information to target Jews hasn't been forgotten, and
the new Eastern European members have even fresher memories of spying and
eavesdropping by their former communist governments.
In today's world, digital commerce companies collect
information on every website users visit and every video they like. This data
is the lifeblood of social media sites that give users free access to their
services in exchange for the right to use that intelligence to attract
advertisers.
But the Facebook scandal shows it can also be used for
other purposes.
A whistleblower this month alleged that Cambridge
Analytica improperly harvested information from over 50 million Facebook
accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. News reports
have focused on the relationship between Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix,
former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and billionaire computer scientist Robert
Mercer, who bankrolled the operation.
Cambridge Analytica says none of the Facebook data was
used in the Trump campaign. Facebook is investigating.
"The regulation is trying to balance the power
between ourselves as individuals and organizations that use that data for a
whole variety of services," said David Reed, knowledge and strategy
director at DataIQ, a London-based firm that provides research on data issues.
The EU's new rules expand the reach of regulations to
cover any company that processes the data of people living in the bloc,
regardless of where the company is based. Earlier rules were ambiguous on this
point, and international companies took advantage of that to skirt some
regulation, the EU says.
While Facebook is based in Menlo Park, California, it has
some 277 million daily users in Europe out of 1.4 billion globally.
The EU legislation also demands that consent forms are
written in plain language anyone can understand. No more legalese across pages
and pages of terms and conditions that few people read before clicking "I
Agree." The regulations also require that consent must be as easy to
withdraw as it is to give.
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