Will Americans Want Their Own GDPR?

Here is something interesting I hadn’t considered in our last GDPR write-up.  As Isaac Cohen at CSO Online points out, all the privacy notification emails US citizens are receiving in light of the new European regulations are alerting them to guidelines that otherwise might have escaped their notice.  As a result, the public is being made aware of the expanded rights EU citizens have gained over their personal data.

How long, then, until American consumers start demanding similar treatment?  Post-GDPR data breach reactions will probably shine some light on that question.  As for what steps will likely be taken, Cohen predicts that outright ownership would be a non-starter politically.  Instead, options centering on notification, transparency, and data protection agency establishment are more probable at state and federal levels.

But will that be enough?  The American public slowly but surely becomes more educated on this subject, and with GDPR there is another new precedent.  Of course, this isn’t always true.  ComputerWeekly.com’s Tim Holman emphasizes that customers still sometimes make inaccurate assumptions, such as the larger a corporation, the more likely their data is secure.

At any rate, it has become plainly obvious that for any organization, careless data handling, or ignorance on any level is unacceptably negligent.  Especially when you do what Facebook did.  Oh, no, I’m not talking about Cambridge Analytica.  Just yesterday, Facebook has now admitted to sharing user data, even without consent, with Chinese mobile phone maker Huawei, among others.  Problem is, the company had been flagged by US intelligence as a national security threat.  The Pentagon banned sales of the phone on military bases in May.  Huawei denies having collected or stored any of the data, but Sen. Mark Warner expressed concerns about it being sent to Huawei’s servers nonetheless.  Facebook, meanwhile, announced an imminent end to this partnership after the news broke.

Whatever the end result of this story might be, it is yet another mark against US consumer control over their personal information.  With GDPR as a standard across the pond, it will be interesting to watch for growing calls to end the free-for-all, and for more rights over one’s data.