Why Europe, not Congress, will rein in big tech

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: April 16, 2018 at 6:12:54 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why Europe, not Congress, will rein in big tech
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Why Europe, not Congress, will rein in big tech
> By Michael Birnbaum and Tony Romm
> Apr 15 2018
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-europe-not-congress-will-rein-in-big-tech/2018/04/14/a39c8cd8-2e33-11e8-8dc9-3b51e028b845_story.html>
>
> U.S. lawmakers demonstrated an increased appetite for regulating technology giants when they grilled Facebook chief 
> executive Mark Zuckerberg about privacy last week. But the future of Facebook’s relationship with its 2 billion users 
> is less likely to be determined from the halls of Congress than it is from an un­assuming 18th-century townhouse in 
> Ireland’s capital packed with lawyers, technology experts and gumshoe investigators.
>
> Europe has been moving aggressively to impose order on the tech space. Already, it has inflicted painful penalties on 
> Apple and Google for their business practices.
>
> Now, technology companies are readying themselves for sweeping new privacy rules that will go into effect next month 
> across the European Union. They could face billion-dollar fines if they fail to give European users far more control 
> over their personal information.
>
> Whether Congress follows the European model, as some lawmakers floated last week, or whether big tech companies 
> determine it’s too cumbersome to treat the 500 million people of the European Union differently from the rest of the 
> world, Europe is likely to keep setting the global pace for aggressive regulation. 
>
> “As a first mover, that has now become a baseline,” said Dean Garfield, the president of the Information Technology 
> Industry Council, a Washington-based trade group for tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. Europe 
> “is increasingly setting the norm.”
>
> And Europeans have embraced the role.
>
> “The E.U. is a real regulatory superpower, and it exports its values and its standards,” said Christopher Kuner, a 
> director of the Brussels Privacy Hub at the Free University of Brussels.
>
> At the center of the action is Helen Dixon, Ireland’s data protection commissioner. Because the European operations 
> for many big technology companies are headquartered in low-tax Ireland, Dixon is set to become the top cop for U.S. 
> tech giants that include Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn and Airbnb when the new privacy regime comes into force on 
> May 25. She will have the power to slap companies with fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue — which for 
> Facebook could mean penalties of up to $1.6 billion.
>
> “Their business model is around monetizing personal data, and this creates very significant challenges in terms of 
> fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals,” Dixon said in an interview in her Dublin townhouse office. “It 
> creates a type of surveillance and tracking of individuals across the Internet that undoubtedly needs regulation.”
>
> Facebook’s latest scandal has been perfectly timed to draw attention to Europe’s long-planned privacy rules. On April 
> 4, the company said “malicious actors” had used its search tools to match previously hacked email addresses and phone 
> numbers to Facebook profiles. That follows the company’s report that Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm hired 
> by President Trump during his 2016 campaign, improperly accessed 87 million Facebook ­users’ names, “likes” and other 
> personal information — in many cases without their knowledge or consent. The matter has spawned investigations on 
> both sides of the Atlantic.
>
> In Europe, Dixon joins an elite rank of enforcers, many of whom happen to be women, holding power over the U.S. tech 
> industry. 
>
> Her partners include Andrea Jelinek, an Austrian data protection regulator who is expected to lead a new board of 
> E.U. consumer-privacy cops.
>
> In the E.U. capital of Brussels, top justice official Vera Jourova has challenged Facebook in recent weeks over the 
> Cambridge Analytica affair.
>
> And then there’s Margrethe ­Vestager, the bloc’s competition chief. She thwacked Google with a nearly $3 billion fine 
> and is forcing it to overhaul how it presents sponsored shopping results. She is making Apple pay $16 billion in back 
> taxes to Ireland. 
>
> Vestager, who was in Washington on Friday, has said she is increasingly turning her attention to issues around user 
> data — a development that has cheered privacy advocates and chilled technology companies, which complain they are 
> being targeted for their success.
>
> [snip]
>
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> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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