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Comment by kingofhdds | Hacker News Reader

>this guy sees the law and runs off without even trying to become compliant

This guy quite clearly states that he doesn't have resources to become compliant, while it is too risky to make a mistake here.

There are fans of GDPR on this website, who prefer to ignore the fact that the compliance has its cost, and added to that still unknown risks of practical interpretation of legislation which also have their cost. But these are real life things.

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I respect his right to do whatever he would like with his own hobby, but we should be clear that the guy is stating he doesn’t have the resources, based on a series of misunderstandings.

So, for example, he says he is required to appoint a DPO.

The U.K. Information Commissioner has this to say:

>Do we need to appoint a Data Protection Officer?

A> Under the GDPR, you must appoint a DPO if:

> you are a public authority (except for courts acting in their judicial capacity);

> your core activities require large scale, regular and systematic monitoring of individuals (for example, online behaviour tracking);

> * or your core activities consist of large scale processing of special categories of data or data relating to criminal convictions and offences.

That's the UK's interpretation of GDPR. What about France or Poland, or any of the other countries?

I suppose it depends where in Europe he would like to visit

I'm not seeing any interpretation being done here, but judge for yourself. Here is what the GDPR actually says (Art. 37 Designation of the data protection officer):

> (1) The controller and the processor shall designate a data protection officer in any case where:

> a) the processing is carried out by a public authority or body, except for courts acting in their judicial capacity;

> b) the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing operations which, by virtue of their nature, their scope and/or their purposes, require regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale; or

> c) the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing on a large scale of special categories of data pursuant to Article 9 or personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences referred to in Article 10.

There's no "UK Interpretation", this is the whole point of the EU. The rules apply across the block.

EU law doesn't work like that. Each country has to pass their own local law to enforce the GDPR. For the UK that was the Data Protection Bill 2017.

From wikipedia:

The GDPR replaces the 1995 Data Protection Directive.[4] Because the GDPR is a regulation, not a directive, it does not require national governments to pass any enabling legislation and is directly binding and applicable.[5]

So, no local laws. It's a regulation.

Only for the sake of correctness/completeness: GDPR does allow member states to adjust certain details to bring them in line with local regulations (see Chapter 9). These are explicit opening clauses though that must not basically weaken or augment GDPR.

It's more complex than that. Different countries might pass different laws about interpretation, and both are valid until there's an ECJ decision.

It's an EU Regulation, which under EU law the local courts have a duty to enforce. Local courts and laws will be dealing with all the details unless a case is appealed to ECJ.

To say that local courts and laws will have no influence is complete rubbish.

I'm not sure why people are downvoting this so hard: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eMV5_l...

That's the UK's straight-forward unequivocal explanation of the rules. Where there is room for interpretation or uncertainty, the ICO is very good at pointing this out. It doesn't here.

As poisan42 points out - it echoes the words in the actual article, directly.

Bottom line, he doesn't need a DPO.

And "large scale" means how many records in DB? How many users? Or records per day?

Monal is an XMPP client running on user's iOS devices. Is that person even running an XMPP server for those users?

These are excellent questions that you will have to have shown you've considered if you get audited. If there's disagreement with the regulator, you'll come together to resolve it, and then may need to appoint one.

Well, so it's undefined, at least until practice of legal application establishes. Undefined means risk, and stopping serving EU is a meaningful mitigation, if your profits don't compensate you for all the hassle. Where's "overreaction“ then?

I guess if you have to ask that question you are not a large scale.

I don't think an argument of such kind would stand in your communication with regulators, or (especially) in courts.

This is "what will you do if the lightning strikes you" thinking. Only about less probable things.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Do you mean “they won't catch you"?

They won't even manage to precisely decide what actually means 'large' let alone if it applies to you specifically, before you die of old age.

The above statement will apply to everybody or nearly everybody (still not you).

Why have you isolated one element from a multiple element sentence:

* core activities * require * large scale * regular * systematic

If you tick all those other boxes, but are concerned that your processing may be teetering on the boundary of 'large scale', I would be cautious and assume your liable.

All repeatable processes are systematic, almost the whole IT goes into the category. And "core" is undefined too.

I agree that it is safer to imply you're liable.

A UK privacy attorney I know considered 20k records (individuals) to be large scale. I haven't seen much helpful guidance. The WP29 guidance I've read only gives examples at the very extremes of large and small so not too helpful. Practical guidelines will evolve over time.

Perhaps more important, dpo is just another hat - if he's ceo,cfo,cto - he can be dpo too?

There are limitations, namely:

"There must not be a conflict of interest between the duties of the individual as a DPO and her other duties, if any."

Specifically they recommend against also being the data controller. I.e. you shouldn't be responsible both for handling personal data and verifying compliance of said handling.

No, because you wouldn't be independent enough. A CFO or a CTO would tell its board things are okay because it isn't in its interest to do otherwise.

That's why some independent DPO jobs are appearing.

But the DPO is a small cog in the machine. Updating the processes is the most time and resource consuming regarding the GDPR.

You are correct as to a DPO, but if he is, say in the US, and subject to GDPR, he must have an EU Representative, who by all indications would be liable for his violations. That's a significant burden if not a practical impossibility for most in his position. Also, if he's transferring personal data from the EU to the US directly from individuals, his only practical way of making that transfer compliant is likely to be privacy shield certified which is not cost free (although he could maybe rely on consent as a derogation, but relying on that has risk). I can think of many things like this that have, if not a hard cost, then a definite cost in time and resources to comply including keeping up with compliance. Could easily be not worth the effort for a single individual.

GDPR compliance takes resources. I would say for a small business it takes about 1 or 2 days. Not hard work but tedious. In the end you will have around 5 documents that will show your processes, what you do to keep data save, a plan how you deal with questions from customers and regulators, that you trained your employees and that you choose your subs carefully.

Essentially that's it.

I am no lawyer but I am a CPO.

Pro tip: Speak with the regulators they are on your side.

I guess you are EU-based, unlike the guy whose text we are debating here.

Yes - I guess having an EU contact is something not easy to come by on the other hand there might soon be a service for it.

I guess an XMPP Server could be considered a communication service an could be subject not to the GDPR but to regulations concerning ISPs and Phone companies.

Well many of us find it completely normal to spend days on having a good security, setting up HTTPS, encrypting content to protect privacy. I wonder why GDPR seems so different, it's just more of the same, just less technical.

Exactly. It will take a while before standards and best practices form, but they will.

I guess I am a fan of GDPR, certainly compliance to anything has a cost. I personally don't find the costs of GDPR compliance onerous unless you have already built up lots of non compliant systems that now need to be fixed, in which case the free ride is over. Anyway, this guy is pulling out of the EU but if he allows anyone from the EU to use his service from a non-EU location anyway he would be risking non-compliance.

no. gdpr applies only to people in the eu. if you are an eu person in canada it does not apply to you.

you're right, it seems a few people have been making the same mistake about eu citizens that I've made.

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