GDPR, An Impossible Dream? Not Anymore

American lawmakers and techies alike have called for a federal data privacy law like Europe’s GDPR. An impossible dream? Astonishingly, not anymore.

- David Meyer

TECH - A year ago, the idea of a federal data privacy law in the U.S. was unthinkable for all but a handful of digital rights activists. As 2018 comes to a close, the prospect of such legislation has suddenly become very real.

In July, the White House said it was looking forward to working with Congress on “a consumer privacy protection policy that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity”. And recent months have seen a deluge of data protection bills, mostly from Democrats.

Remarkably, Silicon Valley seems to be on board. In September, Apple and Google urged lawmakers to create new federal privacy legislation. A month later, Apple CEO Tim Cook demanded new rights for American consumers. “It’s time to face facts,” he said. “We will never achieve technology’s full potential without the full faith and confidence of the people who use it.”

So what brought all this on? That story begins with the European Union’s tough new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, which, by the time it was signed in 2016, was arguably the most heavily lobbied piece of legislation in the EU’s history. The GDPR serves two main purposes: to harmonise data privacy law across the EU and to make sure the fundamental privacy rights of Europeans can be upheld in the context of the age of “big data”.