“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.
You know what would be good? If the browser asked you what you wanted to share, and then that was it. You didnt get asked by every single fucking website to accept fucking cookies. The website asks the browser, the browser tells them, and its all done. If youre gonna make changes, make that change.
This is what ‘do not track’ was for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track
It didn’t work because it was up to the sites to read and respect the flag, which they did not.
do not track was a “pweeease mister serwer uwu”-sorta move. there was no legal basis for it, and there was no technical backing. it would have been simple easy for browsers to just not send stuff that can be tracked (just check the eff panopticon site for how much superfluous stuff is just sent by the browser with every request), but instead the industry opted for the easier “here’s all my stuff just as it was, and a little note that says ‘don’t look’”. do not track was always a joke.
Well we had the “do not track” header but almost everyone ignored it, and in the end it was removed from most browsers because ironically it just made tracking people easier.
I find the proposed amendments to Article 9 particularly problematic … And perfectly in line with AI bros telling you to make AI chatbots your friends while seeing them harvesting suicidal thoughts, self-reported depression symptoms and body dysmorphia.
It’s a constant fight to keep personal data private. This is so fucked up.
Privacy is eroding. For the sellout of citizen data. F**king great.
This is infuriating. A leaked draft that quietly redefines “personal data” and strips out purpose limitation, accountability, and independent oversight is not a tiny technical fix, it is a full-on gutting of the GDPR and ePrivacy protections. If those changes stand, private companies and state actors get a much easier path to profile people on sexual orientation, ethnicity, political views and other deeply sensitive things. That is dangerous and morally obscene.
Who wins here? Not ordinary people. Big tech and ad firms do, because profiling and opaque data sharing become legal again. Regulators and courts lose teeth, and “consent” stays a paper tiger. This reeks of industry capture and political cowardice, and I am sick of seeing rights rolled back by stealthy drafting instead of debate.
If you care, do something: pressure your MEPs to reject any amendments that hollow out GDPR, support EDRi and other civil society groups, and pass the leaked draft around so national DPAs and journalists keep the heat on. Transparency now, not more quiet compromises that hand our data to the highest bidder.
Paywalled, so thanks for the arch link!
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