Hacker News Reader

The GDPR is perfectly straightforward to interpret and apply. It's remarkably similar to the existing Data Protection Directive. If you are using data in a specific, explicit and legitimate way, you have nothing to fear from the GDPR. It only seems radical because tech companies have operated with relative impunity in the past, hoovering up data en masse with no regard to the privacy or security of their users.

Article 83 clearly states that penalties must be proportionate to the scale of the breach, the impact on users, the intentional or negligent character of the breach and the degree of co-operation with the supervisory authority. A supervisory authority can't just bankrupt your company out of spite.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/

Your bio says that you're a founder of a company that processes healthcare data. The maximum civil penalty for HIPAA violation is a fine of $50,000 per violation and there have been several multimillion dollar penalties. The maximum criminal penalty is 10 years imprisonment. If you're worried about GDPR, you should be absolutely terrified of HIPAA.

I'm not worried about it for my company, just putting into perspective why other people might be.

Why, I used to be a HIPPA architect and basically the government (and even more this one) ignored all evidence of HIPPA violations. Our compliance was a complete joke, covered by some fancy "audit" which failed to ask a single question. Laws don't matter unless they enforced.

> Your bio says that you're a founder of a company that processes healthcare data. The maximum civil penalty for HIPAA violation is a fine of $50,000 per violation and there have been several multimillion dollar penalties. The maximum criminal penalty is 10 years imprisonment. If you're worried about GDPR, you should be absolutely terrified of HIPAA.

Yes, I also find this hilarious, people love to spread FUD about the GDPR, but HIPPA is more serious (though limited in scope).

I think the scope differences between HIPPA and GDPR, as well as the specificity of some of the language used, are key factors in why someone might disagree with GDPR, but not HIPPA.

The GDPR is perfectly straightforward to interpret and apply.

How can anything with 11 chapters and 99 sections be "straightforward to interpret and apply"?

https://gdpr-info.eu/

Those chapters and sections are logical and clearly written. It's very easy to figure out which provisions apply to your business and what action you need to take. The ICO have provided extensive guidance and a toolkit for assessing your GDPR compliance.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

If you're making a hardware product for the US market, you need to comply with FCC Title 47 Part 15. If you've never been involved in this process, I'd encourage you to read it. The rules governing a bluetooth speaker are at least as complex as the rules governing Facebook and Google's hoard of personal information.

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=91a501119ab6978f87...

> If you're an American company and a single European citizen uses your services you are bound by the GDPR's regulations.

This is false. I blogged about this topic a while ago: https://www.joyfulbikeshedding.com/blog/2018-04-17-should-no...

The criterium for whether a non-EU company needs to comply to GDPR is: does the company intent to seriously service EU citizen? This is determined based on multiple factors, such as the website's language (do they have e.g. German translations?), providing pricing in euros, testimonials from EU customers, or having a contract with a parcel company with the specific intention of delivering to EU customers. The mere fact that the website can be used by an EU citizen is not enough to have it fall under the GDPR.

Source: the book "Handbook GDPR, Compliance in practice" (page 11) by Arnoud Engelfriet & co, a Dutch IT lawyer. https://ictrecht.nl/boeken/handboek-avg-compliance-in-de-pra...

> The criterium for whether a non-EU company needs to comply to GDPR is: does the company intent to seriously service EU citizen? This is determined based on multiple factors, such as the website's language (do they have e.g. German translations?), providing pricing in euros, testimonials from EU customers, or having a contract with a parcel company with the specific intention of delivering to EU customers. The mere fact that the website can be used by an EU citizen is not enough to have it fall under the GDPR.

Hey, thanks a lot for this. It seems these days the noise is larger than the signal. Hard to find anyone putting careful thought into this. Thank you.

The blog post references a secondary source in Dutch. I’d be careful before relying on that for legal advice.

Said secondary source however is written by a lawyer. A lawyer specialized in IT even.

I would be careful relying on legal advice from a lawyer who is not your lawyer.

That is not under dispute. Of course you should be careful with legal advice that isn't tailored for your specific situation. My comment does not contradict that notion. The content of the book also does not contradict that notion. The book explains the general situation and gives generic advice. But even generic advice is useful to a degree. It does not replace seeking specific advice from a lawyer, but it does complement it. Specific and generic advice are not mutually exclusive.

There is nothing you have said that a business who can potentially be fined to death, rely upon.

The fact that every response to the criticism of GDPR being too ambiguous, is ambiguous, only proves critics right. EU lawmakers picked worst combination: huge fine + huge ambiguity. This all could have been done with more certainity. So sad.

Ambiguity is the way to deal with a changing landscape and changing technologies.

And I agree it sucks, but it sucks less than the alternative (which is to be rigid and say something that becomes meaningless one year after the law is published)

So if as an EU citizen, I sign up for a SaaS product priced in USD, say GitHub, they can do what they like with my data?

It's not as easy as that. As I stated, the criterium for GDPR compliance for non-EU businesses is "does said business intent to seriously do business with EU citizen?". Pricing in EUR is merely one of the multiple possible factors that a judge would use to determine whether this is the case.

I'm not a lawyer so I'm not in a good position to evaluate Github. But I do know that Github has an office in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, so there is at least the possibility that they have to be GDPR compliant.

But let's say you're buying from a random small business web shop in the US, and everything about that web shop clearly screams that their main business intention is work with US customers, it's just that their delivery service happens to ship world wide even though they clearly don't care about non-US customers. Then yes in theory they can "what they like with my data". In practice they probably have to define what "what they like" means in a contract, like a privacy policy, so it's not as if you can't know about what they will do. You are still able to make an informed decision of whether you want to do business with them.

Can you provide a reference in the text of GDPR itself or an official government source such as the UK ICO that supports that criterion for determining if a company needs to comply with GDPR?

Your description does not match with what I have seen about GDPR applying to European data subjects which is the language the regulation uses.

I am not a lawyer myself, it is not very useful to ask me to reference a text in the GDPR. It is far more useful to consult a lawyer. The information I posted is from a lawyer's book, translated almost literally from Dutch to English.

> If you're an American company and a single European citizen uses your services you are bound by the GDPR's regulations.

That isn’t really true. If you have no legal presence, no employees, no offices, etc in Europe, enforcement actions cannot be taken against you.

The law may say you’re in scope, but that’s only relevant within areas where EU laws have any weight.

Please read this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17058645

It's not that the law wants to apply to you but it doesn't have weight because they can't enforce anything against you, as is often heard on HN. It's that the law doesn't want to apply to you.

> Unless the information commissioner is immortal and is appointed for life there are no guarantees that this will always be the case.

Yeah, no. You're wrong.

Thanks for the link, if you had actually read it, it would have listed all the criteria for applying penalties.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/

> "Why should I trust the opinion of the people who are going to sue me if I am found to be noncompliant"

Because that's what people (and lawyers) do in every case concerning regulatory bodies

I'd rephrase it as: GPDR is to thank for those emails.

And also an indication that GPDR might be working.

> Unless the information commissioner is immortal and is appointed for life there are no guarantees that this will always be the case.

Not wishing ill on that particular person, but I actually hope they'll change their mind or get replaced by someone who is heavy-handed with fines.

Because that's the whole point. The reason so many people (myself included) are so impatiently waiting for May 25th is because GDPR has teeth, and can actually do some serious damage to companies continuing to abuse people's data. So if companies are now sending those e-mails because they're afraid, I am happy, because it's evidence that GDPR works.