Canada should follow EU’s lead on data privacy
Canada needs the same rights to put users in control now,
Last month, the European Union’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gave Europeans internet rights that Canadians, Americans, and others should also demand.
This is the first, and overdue, controls on tech by any government and deals with hacking, cyberattacks, election scandals, fake news, hoaxes, hate, libel and mass social manipulation as a result of the sale of our personal data by social and search media to the highest bidders.
I have suspected Canada has been a victim of Russian manipulation, behind a data-based campaign to stop the oilsands pipeline and liquefied natural gas megaprojects in British Columbia.
This is why Canadians need the same rights Europeans now have, which include: Companies must obtain informed consent (in clear and simple language) from users as to how data will be repurposed or sold. Users have the right to opt out of consent immediately without losing their service. They have the “right to be forgotten” (or expunged from the internet), the right to transfer data to another organization, and the right to transparency regarding use of their data and by whom.
Europe has essentially shifted control over private data from the tech company harvesters and their advertisers to the users.
The new laws apply to any company with operations across the 28-member European Union, and if abrogated, can result in immense fines of 20 million euros or up to four per cent of their annual global revenues, whichever is greater. Some companies are blocking their websites from the region so they needn’t comply, but multinationals are not.
France, for instance, was seriously attacked during its presidential election last year and it now has the power to shut down any website guilty of fake news, propaganda, or libellous attacks during elections. Germany, sensitive to ethnic or racial slurs, has the most draconian “anti-hate” law in the world and requires that any site transmitting such statements has hours to take it down or face millions of euros in fines.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is clueless, as is Canada’s Parliament, as to how to address privacy and other internet issues, too. But California has jumped the gun, with other states, by proposing laws similar to Europe’s.
The new laws are onerous. Google has 90 per cent of the EU search market, and has been fined two billion euros already for anti-competitive behaviour. Already it has been bombarded with 650,000 requests by Europeans to delist data that they find offensive, libellous, or inaccurate about them. The courts have ruled that unless information is in the public interest, it can and should be removed.
Within days of the rollout of GDPR, Facebook and Google were hit with US$8.8 billion in lawsuits on the basis that their “consent” gives users an all or nothing choice, in violation of GDPR. The companies disagree.
Obviously, any inhibition on harvesting private data will hurt these sites’ advertising revenues. According to Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, Google’s advertising revenue could fall two per cent and Facebook’s as much as seven per cent due to Europe’s regulations. If Americans and Canadians follow suit declines will be commensurate.
That’s why the tech giants are hoping to avert laws here. Facebook, for instance, recently moved part of its operations out of Ireland to California as a GDPR avoidance measure, leaving Americans, Canadians, and others with the status quo or without any control over their data.
This move infuriated European officials and should infuriate the rest of us. The federal government must move immediately to mandate privacy protection for Canadians.