People's sexual orientation, ethnicity, or political views could be exposed in proposed EU changes to the 'GDPR' digital-rights laws, civil society experts warn, after a leaked draft.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52834195

https://archive.is/je5sj

“If adopted, these amendments would not simplify compliance but hollow out the GDPR’s and ePrivacy’s core guarantees: purpose limitation, accountability, and independent oversight,” Itxaso Dominguez de Olazabal, from the European Digital Rights group, told EUobserver.

The draft includes adjustments to what is considered “personal data,” a key component of the GDPR and protected by Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    96·
    1 day ago

    Looks like somebody has been promised by a one or more large Tech firms a very highly paid non-executive board membership, millionaire speech circuit engagement or gold plated “consulting” gig when their time in the Commission is over…

    Mind you, by now that kind of exchange of “favours” is tradition for the members of the EU Commission.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Legally there are no Corrupt EU Commissioners. To be deemed Corrupt there would have to be actual evidence of Corruption (such as recordings of meetings were they explicitly promised to use their power in a certain way, in exchange for some form of payment, which normally only the Police has powers to obtain), them being subsequently charged and a Court Of Law convicting them for the crime of Corruption.

        None of them was ever just investigated for Corruption, much less convicted so pointing fingers at any one of the them explicitly and saying that they’re Corrupt would be Libel, which in my country (which by the way, is pretty Corrupt, with actual ex-government members convicted of Corruption) is an actual Crime prosecuted by the local Prosecution Office, not merely a civil lawsuit for damages.

        So if I was to name names, I would be putting my head of the block for the Crime of Libel. Obviously I’m not going to do that.

        What there is are various coincidences of EU Commissioners which acted in very positive ways towards certain industries and then after leaving the Commission went to work for those Industries making a lot of money, even thought they had no background in them (never before had worked in said Industries, no Educational training for said Industries).

        Since the police never investigates it, all there are are such coincidences of commissioners ending up in gold plated gigs in the industries they helped whilst they were commissioners.

        I’m not going to put my head of the nose for you by naming names (I’m not a Legal expert so don’t want to risk committing the Crime of Libel by doing so). I suggest you start by looking into were the EU commissioners during the 2008 Crash (during which the commission was very pro-Finance) ended up working afterwards.

        • ptu@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          I didn’t ask for ”corrupt comissioners”, but those who have moved from comission to those positions. There is nothing illegal in pointing those out.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            3 hours ago

            Well, for merely commissioners that moved from the commission to those positions, the first example that comes to my mind is the head of the EU Commission during the 2008 Crash and it’s aftermath, who went to Goldman Sachs afterwards and is still there today.

            During his time in the Commission they were very pro-Finance in the way they handled the aftermath of the Crash with him personally pushing frequently for measures were EU money was used to unconditionally helped the interests of large Financial Industry companies, and Goldman Sachs is one of the largest companies and massively benefited from, amongst other things, near-defaulting Greek Treasuries were bought from the private sector by the EU.

            There’s even a scandal with him were, whilst working at Goldman Sachs, he broke the EU rules on lobbying by using his access card to EU buildings - which he was entitled to have as an ex-Head of the Commission - to simply enter into those buildings and waltz over to the offices of sitting EU officials to lobby for Goldman Sachs. The EU ended up revoking his access privileges, the first and only time that has happened for an ex-EU Commissioner.

    • ssillyssadass@lemmy.worldEnglish
      50·
      1 day ago

      Humanity really can’t progress anywhere with capitalism running so rampant. Every corpo needs to go, or it will be like trying to sail against the wind.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        3·
        6 hours ago

        Humanity is progressing all the time one way or another. Also corporation is a word with far wider meaning than often used, a university is a corporation, a security service is a corporation, a military is a corporation with plenty of subcorporations with their own esprit de corps, and even a network of friends playing DND is a corporation, not even talking about religious sects.

        And all these corporations function, in regards to cronyism and and quid-pro-quo and silent erosion of mechanisms aimed at transparency and resilience, in absolutely the same way.

        So - even in this interpretation there were people agreeing with you, which are now called “not proper communism”, who have ruined all the corporations they could find, have built their own one corporation aimed at first taking power and then fixing the world, it has diverged in a few directions, fostering under their umbrella a few other corporations along the way, and in the end result the territories which those people controlled are still pretty corporate. Except with very peculiar backbones of their organized crime, with traits of a religious sect, which can be traced back to those revolutionaries. There are even a few secret services which have been abolished or merged into other secret services, but in fact still function and their members elect their leaders. It’s scary, ironic, even beautiful, and honestly I respect those people who can keep a tradition even if membership in their structure has nothing to do with money and power anymore.

        But you should notice how when trying to build a social mechanism to impose your will upon the world, like, for example, to kill all corporations, you are building a corporation.

        I’ve used more words than needed to say this.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        8·
        1 day ago

        True.

        That is however a pretty hard and time consuming change, so to me it makes sense that in the meanwhile we take steps to reduce the harm caused by the system still in place, not least by cracking down hard on Corruption and Conflicts Of Interest and closing the legal loopholes that allow certain politicians to stay within the Law whilst purposefully using today the power they have been delegated to do favors for others who have promised them monetary payback for it tomorrow.

        If you’re drowning now you don’t put all your hopes on the ship that might be coming but isn’t even visible yet.