Senate Testimony on Privacy Rights and Data Collection in a Digital Economy
Maciej - I think my viewpoint on the surveillance industry is pretty similar. But reading your description of the current state of affairs <i>still</i> put a shiver up my spine. I can&#x27;t even pinpoint a single passage that did it. Rather the sheer disconnect between the technological world we envisioned and the world they built is overwhelming, and you really got that across.<p>I think throwing the GDPR under the bus based on how the surveillance industry is doing its best to malinterpret it is a bit off. A popup with a list of task-orthogonal surveillance companies demanding consent is obviously an anti-pattern. The prudent course feels like to wait and see how the GDPR actually turns out in practice, and then hopefully adopt it as-is.<p>What I worry about in the meantime is a half-baked &quot;Americanized&quot; implementation that guts its strongest provisions (&quot;Right To Download&quot; -&gt; &quot;correct&quot; feels like already trying to fortify a backstop! Why can&#x27;t I simply just erase?), and blesses ongoing abuses. A disingenuous standard of purported consent is pervasive in our entire society, and I don&#x27;t see why this topic will turn out any different. I can forsee EU regulators concluding that surveillance-based-advertising is not a necessary part of simply viewing a news article, whereas I can see a US regulator blessing that practice.<p>Which maybe implies that &quot;copy GDPR&quot; is actually a decent answer right now, even not knowing how it will turn out. For one, it tells US companies that they need to take the GDPR seriously rather than throwing &quot;block EU&quot; hissy fits. If it&#x27;s really as unworkable as the surveillance industry public relations make it sound, I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll have no problems modifying it.