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European parliament approves tougher data privacy rules

Lafayette

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From the Guardian, European parliament approves tougher data privacy rules - excerpt:

The European parliament has voted through tougher rules on data protection, aimed at boosting privacy and giving authorities greater powers to take action against companies that breach the rules.The rules, including the much-needed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), were four years in the making and form the new backbone of laws for data regulators to pursue companies with heavy fines – as much as 4% of annual turnover for global companies – for incidents such as data breaches, which have become increasingly common.

Viviane Reding, MEP and former vice-president of the European commission who proposed the changes in 2012, said: “This is a historic day for Europe. This reform will restore trust in digital services today, thereby reigniting the engine for growth tomorrow.

“There can be no freedom without security, and no security without freedom. Today’s concomitant adoption of these three legislations sends a strong signal that national security and data protection can and must go hand in hand.”

Phil Lee, a data protection partner at Fieldfisher, said: “Is this law ground-breaking? Absolutely. Europe has created the notions of a ‘right to be forgotten’ and of ‘data portability’, and created fines for data breaches that are on a scale equivalent to fines for antitrust violations. No other region has done that before.

On the other side of the coin (and also from the Guardian): I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets - excerpt:
... on the night of Wednesday 18 December 2013, from the second arrondissement of Paris, I wrote “Hello!” to my first ever Tinder match. Since that day I’ve fired up the app 920 times and matched with 870 different people. I recall a few of them very well: the ones who either became lovers, friends or terrible first dates. I’ve forgotten all the others. But Tinder has not.

The dating app has 800 pages of information on me, and probably on you too if you are also one of its 50 million users. In March I asked Tinder to grant me access to my personal data. Every European citizen is allowed to do so under EU data protection law, yet very few actually do, according to Tinder. ...

Some 800 pages came back containing information such as my Facebook “likes”, my photos from Instagram (even after I deleted the associated account), my education, the age-rank of men I was interested in, how many times I connected, when and where every online conversation with every single one of my matches happened … the list goes on.

There was always a dark-side to the Internet. I recall the first time that I used it - 1991. Yes, it was brand new at the time and limited to only a few places. Like an engineering lab that was a computer client of mine.

It was amazing, even then. That with a few key words one could "dig up and have handed on a platter" so much information. Of course, that information had to be "digitized", which was an enormous job.

But not many at the time could see through to its nefarious uses ...
 
Everything is double edged. Fire is warm, but it can burn your house down. Electricity is awesome, but it can also kill you. Nuclear energy is near limitless, but it's also the most likely way in which our species will go extinct.

The Internet allows me to access information. ANY information. ALL information.
 
The Internet allows me to access information. ANY information. ALL information.

What bothers most(too often) is the quality of the information. Newspapers/journals/books had a commitment to veracity.

Donald Dork, for instance, is "Fake News" from head to toe every time he opens his mouth ...

PS: There is hope, however. Doctors say they are looking for his brain and hope to find it before the mid-term elections ... ;^)
 
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