The Devil is in the detail they say. Have you been affected by the recent EU General Data Protection Regulatins (GDPR).
In the past weeks I have witnessed a rising tide of emails, culminating in the panic on Friday 25th of May as the new GDPR law was about to come into effect. What is it? It is legislation that is meant to protect the private information of private citizens within the EU in this age of mass data collection.
It has become so commonplace these days to hear of some large organisation being hacked or accidentally exposing personal information. Then on top that, there are bad actors who then on sell your information to other parties that you never intended it for. Quite often, this data has been collected under a certain innocuous pretext which you generally agreed to, (website registration), but then used to build more complex profiles and then used for purposes beyond the original intent.
This new legislation was meant to stop that. But of course, most legislators have no real world knowledge or experience with the industries they are regulating. The main target was meant to be the big players. This was part of the fallout from the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, where social media users information was collated to build secret profiles on them.
However, Facebook avoided the GDPR laws and simply moved 1.5 billion user's data from their servers in Ireland to the US to avoid EU regulation. The big fish get away again, leaving small businesses with to deal with the consequences.
In the last couple of weeks I have personally witnessed the panic of small businesses and sole operators grappling with complying to the new law, as specific permission is required from their mail list subscribers for specific contact reasons and activities. Most were expecting, or already finding, that many people simply were not responding to emails to confirm their agreement to be on a list. This means vast swaths of mailing lists are now considered useless.
In the past 20 plus years, our businesses have become dependent upon the electronic communications that the internet provides us. Losing a large chunk of your electronic mailing list could have dire consequences for income and business survival.
But for all of the noise of such legislation, I find it rather hypocritical of governments passing such laws, as they have been some of the biggest benefactors of data collection and profiling by social media sites via their "security" forces, aka spy agencies, which are increasingly turning inwards to watch their own citizens.
What does the GDPR mean for you, as business operator or as an end user? Leave your comments below.
The above image is small detail of a small artwork I am currently working on. I thought it might dramatise the title a bit. You'll get to see the full artwork soon.
Leave a comment below, upvote and resteem if you like it.
More of my artwork can be found on my website. LeoPlaw.com
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Was your newsletter affected?
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So far, very few people have responded. I have quite a few subscribers in Germany and other scattered throughout the EU.
I also have to jump through some technical hoops with my website to enable the MailChimp GDPR feature on my signup forms.
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So you can no longer send your info to people on your mailing list?
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It really comes down to, how much risk is there that there is some one on the list that will take exception and start legal proceedings.
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Seems unlikely. I receive so much spam every day - it doesn't look like the spammers are being vigorously pursued.
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Leo, I set the filters of my gmail to delete any mails containing the word "Datenschutz" automatically, after I got a shitload of mails clogging my inbox and really important mail is getting lost in that crap. So sorry, if I did not respond, it is likely because of that. But you have my assurances I will not sue you if you happen to send me a email or phone me, I promise!
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Whew! That's a relief Otto! =)
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This privacy policy is a good source of income for lawyers who are not getting enough revenue out of chasing ambulances.
The door to the barn (for ordinary citizens) has only now closed after the horses have escaped years ago.
The NSA knows at least immediately if you pay a latte with your credit card, or where you are currently staying, should your phone be turned on - or you use your bank card, or you check into a hotel. In the US and Canada at least yo do not need to fill out a official government residency registration form, and if you pay in cash, nobody knows where you are (I.e. you can sign in as Mr. Smith, if the put a ledger in front of you).
Last time I registered for a room in Germany, I had to let them copy my passport info.
Just for the fun of it, I have a interesting question:
Would it from now on be illegal to print phone books?
This whole thing about soliciting permission is a crock of shit: I gave you my business card, with my email and phone number on it - am I now going to sue you when you write or call me?
How many more courts and Judges does it require to handle all the resulting suits from pranksters who cry "Datenschutz" (Data Protection), and are the courts going to be so busy that there won't be any time to prosecute real criminals (i.e. the dockets have such long queues that many cases will be going past their limitation period and get dismissed)?
Some good points are found in this blog:
https://dreibeinblog.de/datenschutz-ein-witz/
Who is going to protect me from the data protectors?
If you are walking around town with a camera taking pictures of places, you better carry a stack of model release forms with you and have all people who are in your photo sign it before you post it on social media. I am just being facetious now, I know. But one fool (who is a "friend" of a friend) yelled "Datenschutz" every time I raised my camera at events where he happened to be at. OK, I said, why don't you put a paper bag over your head then - but that would go against the "Vermummungsverbot" (colloquially known as the Burka Ban).
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Even though this tread seems to be a dead end, I got something else I like to share - all in the spirit of "Datenschutz":
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/technology/google-images-voters.html
This report of a massive study at Stanford University shows how stupidly useless this law is.
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Honestly privacy to me does not exist anymore, and there is no law that can change that. As the world enter into decentrazation with growth in blockchain technology, I doubt these laws will be relevant. Facebook became successful because people have realized that their government were even less private with their data. Decetralization mean everything will be open and the only way to be private is to avoid giving out your data. There are many ways in which data can be stolen from an individual without being online and this happens daily. These laws will affect a lot of business who stick to centralization but to those who push for decentralzation I doubt it will affect them. These laws do not affect Africans directly but I believe blockchain will offer a good solution. I stand to be corrected.
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as a user the idea of more privacy protecting laws is good but i must say after getting 5 emails and 2 real letters telling me that since i bought a product online and gave the site my address they have to inform me that they got said address.. well it feels like the "we have to inform you that we use cookies" all over again
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Privacy became something utopian, a fiction since the invention of all means of information disclosure, privacy has been diminished proportionally with each new invention of these media, especially with the internet and social networks. These last ones are like a kind of double-edged sword.
I love skulls and that you are drawing is very well prepared, I like the prospect, I hope to see soon the finished work of which is part. What technique do you use? Oil or watercolor? I invite you to visit my blog if you want to know my artwork in different techniques.
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Amazing art @leoplaw,visit my account,i like paint.
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Totally agree, currently I do not see any improvements just that we are bombarded with consent popups, which we are forced to accept, if we want to use the website. Nothing has really changed for the big players, but for SMEs it's getting over bureaucratic.
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Very good article and very appropriate detail to dramatize the title as you said. :) I am curious to see the whole.
This new law is for me just the first step in the opposite direction, which is not protection, but control. We'll see. The question is who are protectors and protecting who from whom. Resteemed
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good question - who is protecting me from the protectors?
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