No, if they don't abide by the laws, their purposes are not completely legal. Just like you cannot completely voluntarily sell yourself into slavery under US law, there are certain inalienable rights that cannot be given up under european law, and control over your personal data is one of them. That is the point of it.
Particularly those parts in which certain large information business organizations were subject to hostile takeovers, rendering prior understandings of data acquisition and use obsolete.
I'm thinking in particular of, say, the German Bundesrepublic and Vichy France. Though you might argue that the former was sanctioned by democratic processes, I suspect even you would be hard pressed to say the same of the latter.
If nothing else, it'll keep you off HN for a few hours, which would be a net benefit for the rest of us. With a low p-value, you might actually accumulate a few drams of wisdom.
I think taking the discussion to rights is just a bad idea in the first place. Stick with what's in the law, and argue morality without appealing to rights.
The rights are in European law. They're called 'fundamental rights' and are quite explicit. EU citizens have a lot of individual constitutional rights that Americans do not. They're fundamental because they can't be signed or bargained away, and the reason for that is to reduce the inventive of firms or governments to employ trickery to that end.
I really wonder how much of that is because the EU is made up of many countries and these countries want to protect their own. It's kind of similar to how the breach disclosure rules are significantly different from state to state.
The other thing that I wonder is how much of the US not having the strict laws is due to Corporate Personhood. I honestly don't know, I'm just throwing it out there.
On corporate personhood - not a big favtor as far as I know. It exists in a lot of European countries much as it does here. A lot of the EU rights are rooted in the social contract ideas of Rousseau and the like, tempered by experience of war, the iron curtain and so on.
