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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
GDPR Fines Haven't Rocked the Data Privacy World
When it launched, Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became bigger than Beyoncé. Since then, some of the hype around the law has waned, but there's still one thing that gets people excited: fines.
Under the law, data-protection regulators across Europe have boosted powers to punish companies and organizations who are found in breach of the GDPR. The most serious consequences can be fines of up to €20 million ($22.4 million) or 4 percent of a firm's global turnover, whichever is greater. These are larger than the £500,000 ($650,000) penalties that could be issued by the UK's regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office, under the old data-protection rules.
Before the GDPR was enforced there were outlandish predictions that businesses would be hit with huge fines for data-protection issues. Some estimates claimed GDPR fines would be 79 times higher than those under previous rules; others said banks would be hit with fines of up to €4.7 billion ($5.3 billion) in the coming years.
Unsurprisingly there hasn't been a deluge of fines running into millions or billions of euros, but the EU's 28 data-protection regulators are slowly beginning to flex their enforcement muscles—including against big tech companies.
After the first year of the GDPR, the European Data Protection Board reported (PDF) that nations had examined 206,326 cases under the law. Helen Dixon, the Irish data-protection regulator who has jurisdiction over US tech companies because of their European headquarters in Ireland, has investigations open into at least 17 multinational firms. These include Facebook and its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, plus Google and Twitter.
Regulators have already moved against big tech companies and others who have failed to properly protect consumer data. Here's what we know about the GDPR fines that have been issued around Europe so far and why they've been handed out.
[Ed's Note: Under the fair use laws we cannot publish much of the story but the report details a handful of cases where fines have been levied and explains why such action was deemed appropriate in each case. Most companies so far penalised by fines are European, although ongoing investigations exist against business from the US and elsewhere.]
(Score: 2) by hwertz on Monday November 04 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)
Well, the outlandish predictions were outlandish. GDPR's goal is to protect people's privacy, not to bankrupt companies. If you read The Register, companies in Europe at least were VERY worried about GDPR as it rolled out, and truly did make changes to improve privacy in order to avoid these fines. 4% of income is enough to make any company sweat.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday November 04 2019, @05:52PM
The harsh part about GDPR is its effect on two groups:
Article 27 of the GDPR [privacy-regulation.eu] effectively requires companies outside the Union that sell into the Union to hire a representative on Union soil. (The biggest exception to this is "processing which is occasional," but Article 27 leaves the word "occasional" undefined.) A small business based in Canada or the United States with, say, $1 million in worldwide annual revenue and $20,000 per year of sales into the Union might not be able to afford $2,700 per year [verasafe.com] for this representative service. So pending case law that defines "occasional," some small businesses have chosen not to sell into the Union. For example, some have removed all EU member states from billing and shipping address validators in order to stay outside the GDPR's territorial scope pursuant to Article 3(2) [privacy-regulation.eu].