I don't want to get down-voted but I like this regulation, good job EU!
Politicians have a tendency to think that passing legislation fixes problems, where is its only the start of the process.
Being in favour of the GDPR will bring out downvotes and FUD from the people whose very salaries are dependent on invading your privacy.
Somethings are big more challenging like getting the data for customer when asking or deleting it when reasonable. But as user I also like at least having that option. It is least any business can do.
Based on this behavior I'd have to infer American courts are punitive oriented (so you must never slip up) while European courts are resolution oriented (so good faith is enough and stop worrying so much).
My inference also explains why American businesses don't listen to European courts until the fines get big. They get some small penalty on their first violation and think "that's all?" and continue the violation, then four or five cases later the penalty gets big enough to make them comply. See Apple with the interop rulings.
The problem is that it applies to small organisations, even non-profits, that do not trade that information which is proportionately a much bigger burden. Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. They are pretty good and ethical anyway - the theatre recently impressed me when I found out that if you give them medical information in case of emergency they put it in a sealed envelope and no one opens it unless there is an actually emergency that requires it (i.e. you keel over there!).
Yeah, and that is precisely where you want something like the GDPR to be as well!
Large corporations are one thing, they have compliance departments, but so, so many local organizations have gotten hacked or data exfiltrated because "why do software and hardware updates when everything is working" or due to incompetence ("cc all"). GDPR finally gave the younger crowd some leverage to get the old guard to do things at least somewhat decently.
They have a lot less information. Consider my too examples. What do they record electronically? Name and address. The church will have relationship to people such as spouse and children, which are in public records anyway. A few details of sons preferences and involvements. The theatre is even more public - if you act its publicised. They might both have records of tax deductible donations. They do not have unique identifiers such as appear on ID documents or NI (UK tax and social security) numbers. They do not correlate this with outside sources. There is very little to leak.
What does each one of your systems store exactly? Do they allow configuration of reasonable data retention policies for PII? What do your systems log? How do you make sure that only the minimum amount of PII (including user IP addresses) is logged and that the covered logs are destroyed at the end of a reasonable retention period?
How do you handle Data Subject Access Requests? Can you compile all the data related to that person in a reasonable time to send it to them?
How do you handle deletion requests? Can you name all the data storage that is affected if a deletion request comes in? Are your systems technically capable of deleting the data? What data is exempt (e.g. billing addresses can't just be deleted before the mandated archival period is over)? Do you maintain backups? Then how do you make sure that data covered by a deletion request is destroyed and stays gone even in the event of a backup recovery?
Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.
I doubt anybody wants to deal with fire safety inspections either.
Though I'm quite sure you will change your mind when your personal data gets hacked or your office burns down.
Fire safety is less onerous and less complex.
If there is one thing that is incredibly complex, it is fire codes - in no small part because these vary from town to town, or to be more precise, the height of their portable ladder trucks. Once you build higher than these, you have to plan for a second escape route.
That's not that bad of a thing if you work exclusively in one area... but good luck if you operate across the nation or, worse, internationally because everyone does things a liiiitle bit differently.
Also, I'd take fire safety over GDPR if I had a choice. That is much easier to get a handle on.
Indeed but it forces you to answer these questions and to think about them during the development process as well, maybe even enough to write decent unit and regression tests for anything authentication/authorization related before some security "researcher" siccs Claude Code or whatever on your API and pwns it.
That's a very narrow perspective. The vast majority of businesses aren't this. Even a plumber who types up offers and invoices on a computer is subject to all of this mess.
Yeah and that plumber has 1000s of customer names, addresses, phone numbers, mail addresses, in Europe maybe even SEPA Direct Debit data.
Not funny if that kind of stuff leaks, especially not if you're, say, a person with a public register block due to domestic violence or whatever (basically, one step before witness protection that gives you a whole new identity).
If your primary focus as an electrician, plumber or other tradesperson is SME or industry, of course, then there is far less customers.
At least here in Germany, in most rental contracts the responsibilities are split between landlord and renter, with the landlord being responsible for the heating, the water mains and the large fusebox, but the renter has to deal with everything under the scope of "Kleinreparatur". Exchanging faucets and siphons, wall sockets, installing laundry machines and other appliances, installing lamps, that kind of stuff many people (like me) can DIY but other people (like a lot of my friends) can't or don't want to, and they call in the professionals for an hour or two. And these guys have like 4-6 service calls a day.
"I don't want to deal with it" is relatable and human - and one of the main reasons why potentially dangerous things are / have to be regulated.
Eh?
Collect only the personal data you need (with permission) and keep it secure. Such a basic responsibility to your members privacy and safety is hardly a burden.