The first major government crackdown on Facebook and great technologies in connection with the unfolding scandal of the Cambridge analyst and growing concerns about privacy do not come from Capitol hill, the White house, or anywhere in Washington. Instead, it probably came from Europe.
25 may, Europe will adopt a General data protection regulation, or GDPR, the new code is designed to ensure that users know and understand the companies and collecting data about them and agreed to exchange it. The law requires companies to be transparent with what information they collect and why. People were given the right to access all your personal data, control access and use of it and even delete it.
The law set the data privacy and protection in the center design technologies — it is not to be minor.
The law protects citizens from 28 member countries of the European Union, regardless of where the data is processed or the company to collect its headquarters. In other words, any company or organization in the world, including banks, universities, social networks, technology platforms, and publishers — work with the data of European citizens must obey.
“It can bring some control to the Wild West of third parties working on these platforms,” said Karen Kornbluh, senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on foreign relations and former U.S. Ambassador to the organization for economic cooperation and development under the Obama administration.
And GDPR only has a direct impact on the Europeans and those who do business with them, given the scale of the market is around 508 million people living in the European Union — it is hoped that this will force companies to emphasize confidentiality to all its clients worldwide
“Because it is such a massive Economy and is so important, he has the power to create what becomes, thus, a world standard,” said a former Federal Commissioner of the trade Commission bill Kovacic told me.
I mean, sure, if companies want to have one standard for Europe and another for everyone else.
In GDPR digitally consent, privacy and control are front and center
Designed to replace the previous leadership of the European Union, constructed in 1995, GDPR is the most radical overhaul of the online championship for more than two decades. It was approved by the EU Parliament in April 2016 and will enter into force on 25 may 2018.
What the law does, in fact, is the uniform rules for how companies handle the data of European citizens, the expansion of that personal data, increased transparency and harmony and set specific penalties for performance.
Among its requirements:
- The firm must inform customers about a data breach within 72 hours from the time of detection.
- They must seek the consent of the user in a Clear, accessible form.
- They must ensure data portability, that is, users may be asked for a copy of their information and send it to others.
The law also includes a “right to be forgotten” — which means that people can set the platforms to stop the spread, stop third-party access or delete your data. Listed in article 17 of the Law “right to destroy” it allows people to request that persons disclosing their personal data to delete and not to distribute them further, so they can essentially take back his consent. The company in theory should respond if there is any public interest in the data (say, a public figure, historical, etc.), but there is some debate about how it will be executed. For example, if a public figure wants to have something from her past removed, it is not clear whether it will be able to do it.
Companies that do not comply with or violate the rules can face steep fines of up to 4 percent of annual revenue. For Facebook, This is approximately $ 1.6 billion.
The law offers “a real chance to renegotiate the terms of interaction between people, their data, and companies” and not mindlessly clicking on the terms of the agreement, David Carroll, associate Professor of media design at the new school, told Wired.
While the law will only directly affect Europeans, it is believed, it may have a wider impact worldwide. Why do companies want to have a single system for people in France, Germany, Italy, and a separate for people everywhere?
“It’s weird to say, ‘Yes, we must respect the private life of Europeans more than all the other people around the world,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet freedom advocate and the Director of the ranking digital rights, the initiative for the study of global standards in the field of freedom of expression and privacy in the digital space.
But it may be that, at least, some companies will do — including, perhaps, Facebook. The company’s founder and CEO mark Zuckerberg told Reuters that Facebook is working on a version of policy that will comply with the law and will work globally, but seemed to recognize that it is not to implement all this business around the world. “We are still nailing the details about this, but it should be aimed, in the spirit of the whole thing,” said he.
During a call with reporters on Wednesday, Zuckerberg pushed the interpretation of his comments to Reuters that Facebook is not stopping application of the guidelines GDPR for all users. “We’re going to do all of the same controls and settings available everywhere, not just in Europe,” he said.
USA is in no hurry to intervene in rules techniques. Europe moved forward.
That Europe will be quicker to act to regulate Facebook and other tech companies is not a surprise. She became a leader in the arena in recent years, while the United States has taken a back seat.
“I think it’s fair to say that [Europe] is a global policy on privacy and data protection, and they do it at a time when they see us, the system was clearly insufficient,” Kovacic, who now works as a Professor at the George Washington University, said. “The legislative capital is not Washington or Brussels”.
The European court in may 2014, has ordered Google and other search engines operating in Europe to allow people the “right to be forgotten”, allowing them to specify sites to be excluded from certain search results associated with their name. Since that time the company has produced over 650,000 requests.
Europe was much more aggressive than the US in the global antitrust practice in the technology probing Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. In the middle of 2017, the EU antitrust hit Google with a fine in the amount of $ 2.7 billion for unfair favoring its own service over those of your rivals. He was one of the most aggressive moves against us technology companies in the world.
Germany in the beginning of the year began enforcing a new law of hatred, which gives social networking in just 24 hours to act on hate, false news and illegal materials.
“Europe has been faster,” assistant democratic Senate told me, adding that many companies in Europe are regulated by European, but American. “There is a desire to regulate the activities of companies that are not based in your country.”
There’s no explanation for why Europe was far more willing than in the US. Europe has historically been more important technological practices. Although Americans, as a rule, the priority of individual liberty, Europeans are more inclined to value the role of the state. Americans are generally more tolerant of offensive speech than the Europeans. This has resulted in an even greater impetus for regulation of the technology in Europe.
“In the European sense of privacy as a fundamental human right enshrined in law for a long time,” Michelle de mooy, Director of the privacy and data of the Center for democracy and technology. “They have this people-first mentality more than we do here in our capitalist society, where innovation is sort of equivalent to letting businesses do whatever they need to grow. Leading to a rather weak data protection”.
“There is a reluctance in [us] policy arena, to take steps that would seem to inhibit the growth and emergence of this remarkable information services sector, which has become so successful in nearly 25 years,” Kovacic, a former FTC Commissioner, said.
The US made attempts at global leadership, for example, in 2011 the agreement on the network of Directive principles in the OECD, which set out global guidelines for consumer protection, Intellectual property, cybersecurity and intellectual property and to protect human rights and the free flow of information. The Obama administration has twice followed up with a proposal on our bill of privacy rights of consumers, who twice failed to reach consensus.
And in the specific case of Facebook, the FTC is currently investigating the company over the scandal of the Cambridge analyst. He is probing whether Facebook violated a 2011 agreement with the Agency for their privacy policy.
It is important that the United States has a seat at the table
It’s not necessarily terrible that Europe has emerged as a novice in the regulation techniques. And the promotion of entrepreneurship and spirit of capitalism ingrained in Silicon valley and companies like Facebook are part of the American DNA. But there are risks.
There were rumblings that, for example, the law of Germany, the hatred goes too far in reducing the freedom of speech. McKinnon said there was “real concern among human rights groups that it would lead to excessive censorship” and put too much power in deciding their employees about what to keep and what to remove. “When in doubt, you to censor, whether it’s actually illegal. There are all kinds of problems with some brute force in Europe around fake news and hate, which clearly goes in the direction of counterproductive,” she said.
In the case of GDPR, the law must be fulfilled in may, de mooy said there was a risk to put too much weight on the shoulders of individual users to figure out what will allow to happen with their data. “To the extent that the EU rushed forward, with the consent of the key, in this environment, when we can’t really know what is collected about us all the time and that is used, putting the onus on the individual to use the court to allow or to prohibit something may be problematic,” she said.
The U.S. has not withdrawn from its place in the table, but it can certainly assume a greater role than to ensure that other countries when they meet standards for technology and information, without going too far.
“People are concerned about privacy, of hatred, disinformation, and we are not Leading on these issues, what would keep the free flow of information,” said Kornbluh. “You don’t want some of the government say that we are against fake news, and infringement of human rights.”
Sourse: vox.com
