How one country blocks the world on data privacy

(Via POLITICO)

Last May, Europe imposed new data privacy guidelines that carry the hopes of hundreds of millions of people around the world — including in the United States — to rein in abuses by big tech companies.

Almost a year later, it’s apparent that the new rules have a significant loophole: The designated lead regulator — the tiny nation of Ireland — has yet to bring an enforcement action against a big tech firm.

That’s not entirely surprising. Despite its vows to beef up its threadbare regulatory apparatus, Ireland has a long history of catering to the very companies it is supposed to oversee, having wooed top Silicon Valley firms to the Emerald Isle with promises of low taxes, open access to top officials, and help securing funds to build glittering new headquarters.

Now, data-privacy experts and regulators in other countries alike are questioning Ireland’s commitment to policing imminent privacy concerns like Facebook’s reintroduction of facial recognition software and data sharing with its recently purchased subsidiary WhatsApp, and Google’s sharing of information across its burgeoning number of platforms.

Interviews with scores of privacy experts, data watchdogs, academics and regulators in other countries reveal increasing concern that the landmark General Data Protection Regulation, the product of years of wrangling with data companies, is vulnerable because of the one provision on which the tech companies prevailed: That the lead regulator be in the country in which the tech firms have their “data controller” – in most cases, Ireland.

“We need to be careful and ensure that the margin for maneuver given by the GDPR doesn’t lead to an attractiveness competition between EU countries, as is already the case for taxation,” Marie-Laure Denis, France’s new chief privacy regulator, warned the French parliament in January, in a clear reference to Ireland. “I don’t want to see a race [between EU countries] to attract or keep the headquarters of the big tech actors.”

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