The Black Swan — GDPR
For the first time in 245 years, Europe has figured out a way for foreign governments to tax you without consent or representation — and they’re doing it right now.
Surprised?
If you live in North America, you probably haven’t heard of GDPR, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that took effect in May 2018. According to some experts, it promises a utopian ideal for online privacy, while others feel it’s putting the regulatory cart before the technology horse (see Doc Searls on Personal Agency https://tinyurl.com/ybchys4a).
As a tipoff that something changed, you may have noticed your inbox suddenly swelling with messages from companies extolling how important your privacy has suddenly become to them. USA Today’s Rob Pegoraro observed, “Almost everybody who uses an online service or app that handles their data has been getting a flood of emails advising of privacy-policy changes.”
The teeming ranks of privacy advocates and identity experts are cheering that government has finally addressed data privacy in an omnibus way — forcing businesses to be, arguably, a little more transparent about how they exploit data to make more money.
It’s arguable because if all businesses tell you to read scores of pages of legal gobbledygook at the same time, you likely won’t read any of it. And it doesn’t actually stop them from data exploitation, mind you…it just forces them to tell you they’re doing it. Still, some privacy experts feel it’s a good move. Daniel Solove, founder of TeachPrivacy, encouraged us to “…offer a toast to the GDPR — it deserves our praise and admiration.”
“Why should I care?” you ask.
You blew right past all those policy update notices and virtually no one will ever read them.
Your subsequent actions now result in other governments making money, and you have nothing to say about it.
If that galls you more than just a little bit, and it should, read on.
Here’s the skinny:
According to eugdpr.org, the official site for GDPR, the EU established regulations regarding how businesses further use data they collect from your actions. These regulations went into effect on May 25, 2018. While this only applies to companies that do business in the EU, many of those same companies do business outside the EU as well. And since it’s cheaper in most cases for companies to have one way of doing things, and certainly more profitable to combine all that data instead of keeping it separate, most companies are rolling out their changes to all their customers, regardless of where they live.
The most immediate impact to you is that companies must provide you notice and maintain your consent to continue to use information about you for extra profits — hence the sudden deluge of emails in your inbox.
Why did the EU, which has a hard time agreeing on anything, decide to make your privacy their priority?
Follow the money.
Governments have been jealous of the huge profits and power they see in the information sector. They also know that businesses routinely screw up or intentionally evade regulations. Either way, that means heavy penalties when they get caught. By floating out regulations, and then levying gigantic fines, GDPR is governments’ first big chance to elbow their way into the cash cow of the internet age. Warwick Ashford, Security Editor for Computer Weekly.com, stated, “…fines paid to the European regulator could see a near 90-fold increase, from £1.4bn in 2015 to £122bn,” and that’s just within the UK.
Let’s be clear with conclusions we can all draw from this.
· You and I use services from companies like Google and Facebook, for the most part paying no money.
· Those businesses use the data we generate to identify information about us and they exploit it, selling it in various ways — making obscene profits.
· So, the service isn’t exactly “free” then, is it — we pay them, in kind, with our data generation.
· The government then charges those businesses fines, big ones, to get a share of the profits.
· Businesses never simply “absorb” government charges, they increase their price in one way or another to pay for it.
Question: will the EU ever then split that money up and pay us our share for the data we generate?
Don’t hold your breath.
Narrative fallacy notwithstanding, GDPR is a bridge built to taxation without representation, and that’s a black swan for you and me. They get huge new revenue, and all we get are some emails we ignore, and some additional abilities to opt-out of some of those exploitations…if we want to take the time to read through hundreds of pages and search for them.
And who will pay for the higher costs? You can bet it will be us in one way or another. In this, GDPR is a textbook black swan — an unexpected event of large magnitude and consequence that will play a dominant role in our history going forward.
We didn’t see that coming.
Privacy Co-op.com is doing something new and different about it — and it doesn’t require a single new regulation. In fact, it may make it possible to reduce regulations! Participants tell the co-op the companies they wish to stop exploiting their information (per each company’s own privacy policy!), and they join forces with others that feel the same way to make them stop — for free! And for paying members, when companies do pay to use the information, and thus avoid fines, the members will get a share of the profits as dividends.
Imagine privacy where you can make companies stop with a single click and get them to pay with a single membership.
That’s what Privacy Co-op.com is building. It’s our directed response to the GDPR black swan.
The Privacy Co-op offers Lifetime Memberships. For a one-time fee of $50, you will help fund vital legal action and get a share of the profits. For many people angered by the recent Facebook data exploitation, or who simply don’t savor the idea of foreign governments taxing them without representation (who would?), this may be a no-brainer — make them stop, and then make them pay.
Sounds a little like the response from 245 years ago, doesn’t it?
