Data & Privacy – EU General Data Protection Regulation
Cambridge Analytica has become a household name in recent days as we learn how they had access to valuable data about 50 million Facebook users which may have played a role in influencing the US elections in 2016. There are a lot of loose ends to this story that are emerging as every day goes by. This brings to the fore an issue that has existed for a long time – based on enthusiasm and euphoria, new technologies are adopted by millions and millions of people all around the world without carefully thinking through important issues such as data security and privacy. Rules and regulations that can potentially help, take a long time to develop and they lag. The rapid pace of technology in the past three decades, fueled by the adoption of internet, has increased this gap tremendously. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
Talking about rules and regulations, we are in the midst of implementing necessary protocols and controls as required by the European Union called General Data Protection Regulation. As the site reminds us, we all have 63 days to comply!
A disclaimer – this is a pretty complicated regulation, the details of which are still being vetted carefully and what you will read below is my interpretation based on internal discussions and consultations with other attorneys.