Europe's Privacy Law Hasn’t Shown Its Teeth, Frustrating Advocates

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/technology/GDPR-privacy-law-europe.html

By Adam Satariano
NYTimes.com
April 27, 2020

LONDON -- When Europe enacted the world’s toughest online privacy law nearly 
two years ago, it was heralded as a model to crack down on the invasive, 
data-hungry practices of the world’s largest technology companies.

Now, the law is struggling to fulfill its promise.

Europe’s rules have been a victim of a lack of enforcement, poor funding, 
limited staff resources and stalling tactics by the tech companies, according 
to budget and staffing figures and interviews with government officials. Even 
some of the law’s biggest supporters are frustrated with how it has worked.

In addition, the response to Covid-19 is raising new questions about the role 
of privacy safeguards, as digital tools for tracking health and location 
information, once viewed warily by the European authorities, are now crucial 
parts of containment strategies.

The law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R., created 
new limits on how companies can collect and share data without user consent. It 
gave governments broad authority to impose fines of up to 4 percent of a 
company’s global revenue, or to force changes to its data-collection practices. 
The policy served as a model for new privacy rules in Brazil, Japan, India and 
elsewhere.

[...]

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