Talk to better consultants. Consultants are not the regulator. The regulation itself is in plain language. What do you consider is not thought through?
* I (like most companies) have a variety of unstructured and/or immutable logs. I can't just DROP FROM table WHERE. Is it acceptable to delete this data by waiting a few days for a retention period to expire, or do I have to retrofit deletion functionality in?
* What if the retention period is a week, or a month? What if I've been advised to establish those longer retention periods for other reasons?
* If a bug is found in the data deletion workflow, is it an undue delay to say we'll tackle it next sprint? Do we need to drop everything and make it a priority now?
* Once we've resolved a personal data deletion bug, is it an undue delay to roll it out slowly over a week? Does it matter if this is our standard rollout process, or if there's a risky hotfix process we're deliberately choosing not to use?
A lot of the "problems" of the GDPR goes away if you minimize the amount of personal data you process and retain, which incidentally generally will be good for your security as well.
Surely you see why this doesn't weaken the claim that it's hard for existing companies to understand what must be done to comply.
In order to be allowed to store PII (even if it's in logs) you need a specific purpose. Why do you put PII in logs? What benefit does the user have?
> * What if the retention period is a week, or a month? What if I've been advised to establish those longer retention periods for other reasons?
If there is a legal requirement to keep PII (for example accounting) you can/must keep it as long as the legal requirement demands. If there is no legal requirement you have to delete PII, there is nothing that trumps that.
> * If a bug is found in the data deletion workflow, is it an undue delay to say we'll tackle it next sprint? Do we need to drop everything and make it a priority now?
If your next sprint starts 1 month down the road the regulator won't be happy. If it's next week and your GDPR doesn't have other gaping holes a reasonable regulator won't bat an eye.
> * Once we've resolved a personal data deletion bug, is it an undue delay to roll it out slowly over a week? Does it matter if this is our standard rollout process, or if there's a risky hotfix process we're deliberately choosing not to use?
Are you playing for time or doing responsible software development? If a regulator thinks you are bending the rules good luck, otherwise nobody will demand of you doing dangerous stuff.
I know, there are a lot of things open to interpretation. But as my lawyer told me: "There are people getting a speeding ticket for 5 above the limit and others who don't. Try to stick to the limit and make sure you are seen as one of the second category."
I probably would want to impose stricter rules on myself for the sake of avoiding regulators. But that's part of the problem. It doesn't seem possible to comply with GDPR as such without an army of consultants to guide you; what you have to do instead is invent a stricter regulation and follow that one instead.
> If a regulator thinks you are bending the rules good luck
That's the other part of the problem. A healthy regulatory system needs some way to say "well, you think I'm bending the rules, but I'm actually compliant in this complex way you hadn't considered". If a GDPR regulator just doesn't know much about software development, and thinks that any rollout-induced delay is undue, how do I argue against that?
Read my comment again, it does not say a user benefit is required. What it says is that you need a specific purpose for processing PII. A user can only give you consent for a specific purpose. What is the purpose that results in his PII ending up in an immutable log file? Asking for general consent without a specific purpose does not work with GDPR.
> That's the other part of the problem. A healthy regulatory system needs some way to say "well, you think I'm bending the rules, but I'm actually compliant in this complex way you hadn't considered". If a GDPR regulator just doesn't know much about software development, and thinks that any rollout-induced delay is undue, how do I argue against that?
If you feel you are being treated unfairly you will probably argue through your lawyer. As a technical person I would love it if the GDPR is black and white. It would allow me to know if I comply or not but real life is hardly black and white. So instead of being upset with things I can't change I will just do my best to comply.
PS: I don't understand the downvote.
I need a specific purpose for processing PII, but that doesn't mean that I need a specific purpose for each individual place that PII ends up going. If my web server or database end up incidentally capturing the data in transit, that's not a violation, any more than it's a violation if I copy the data onto more sheets of paper than are strictly necessary.