You live in Los Angeles (according to Google). How will GDPR help you? Companies such as Google and Facebook aren't going to implement European laws for their American customers!
Google and Facebook may choose not to, but plenty of others will. Consider the technical challenges of implementing one set of compliance rules in one place, and one set elsewhere. The profit gain from not following GDPR in an area must exceed the cost of maintaining separate rulesets.
LinkedIn's new policy that goes into effect in May appears to grant GDPR-like permissions across all users, for instance, though it does specify that EEA countries may have additional rights under the law. I suspect the majority of companies will end up complying with GDPR globally.
Under a hypothetical US version of the GDPR, Google might be prohibited from sharing that data with non-governmental third parties. But it wouldn't be prohibited from collecting and storing that data, as showing someone their location history (with clear opt-out language) is actually in the legitimate interest of providing better mapping services for that individual. And law enforcement wouldn't be subject to those third-party restrictions.
There are additional laws that could protect citizens against overreach. But something like the GDPR alone would not do the trick.
This is especially dangerous given that there is already overreach in which data on the correlation of travel and behavior with crime, is being used to unlawfully detain people: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568351544/teens-arrested-on-g... This data would only serve to multiply that problem. It's not an easy problem to solve.
How is remembering where I have been useful to me at all? Hopefully something like a us GDPR would make them excplicitly ask my permission before stalking me.
'“When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don’t need access to,” said Evans, adding that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners’ Facebook accounts.'
I'm not the original commenter, but I could find it by getting your name from Github, then googling it. Your LinkedIn was the first result, and there was LA.
> It’s pretty hard to imagine those laws coming to the US in our lifetimes with all the corporate interests that would oppose them
...or with the large number of ordinary citizens who would oppose them or be indifferent to them. People here tend to have their privacy/safety balance set quite a bit more toward the "privacy" side than do most people.
Where most people draw the line, I think, is when surveillance is looking into their homes. Being surveilled when they are out and about in public does not bother them much.
Not really, the GDPR is applicable to persons in the EU (not just in Europe) and not to persons using a VPN server in the EU.
Anyway, the GSPR does not ban American-style surveillance in Europe. Most European countries have used the Snowden leaks as a blueprint to increase surveillance in almost every aspect, especially online and with many related obligations for Internet companies.
I’m not sure how other companies will implement it but I certainly expect most to bluntly use geo-IP to locate customers and apply GDPR-compliant practices without digging too much whether that particular customer is likely to lawyer-up. European services probably will blanket apply it to all their customers.
It’s possible (if unlikely) that after a militant based in Europe but geo-IP located elsewhere by accident notices something unsavoury and complaints, that companies implements an “Are you based within the EU?” toggle in account settings to avoid headaches.
For social services, I’m curious on how processes based on your friends’ will be implemented when your friends are partially in the EU and elsewhere. But I don’t expect this will be much harder than it currently is to circumvent, say, Netflix geo-blocks.
