It is reasonable to assume overreach by governing bodies will occur; this is no less true for the EU than for any national government. The EU is no less likely to misuse that hammer, intentionally or not.
Re:GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU
by dangerface on Friday May 18, 2018 @05:57AM
(#17100112)
"It is reasonable to assume overreach by governing bodies will occur"
No its not as they now have regulations in place to prevent that, before GDPR you could. You can only be sued to the poor house from it if you do something like leave your patients health information on the bus.
Even then you probably won't. If it's an incident that happened despite of having taken the necessary precautions, you would probably get only a small fine or a warning.
It's also reasonable to see what happened in the last 20+ years that there were DPAs already.
I haven't seen overreach by them, did you?
These laws have been in place since 2016, they are going to start enforcing them starting the 25th. If you actually read anything about it from the source, it's clear it's setup against data abusers. It's not aimed at small businesses. If you don't do anything with user data, you don't even have to do anything. Like in the case of the OP. Aside from that, the EU doesn't have a history of overreaching/abusing power such as this. If this was US legislation your worries would be justified.
Re:GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU
by zerostar07 on Thursday May 17, 2018 @08:09PM
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Actually DPAs are national. So there is one for each state, not a "central" one for the whole EU.
Re:GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU
by drewbuschhorn on Thursday May 17, 2018 @07:46PM
(#17097264)
So we've gone from you can't, to you won't, to you almost certainly won't. I completely agree, I'm just saying the 1% possibility is something you have to live with.
How do you know that a small company will only get warnings. I don't understand the source of your bravado. Perhaps it really is different from US.
Re:GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU
by buckminster on Thursday May 17, 2018 @07:23PM
(#17097090)
Because this will be enforced by the same people who enforce the existing regulations. We've had twenty years experience. We know how they operate.
What this gives the EU is the hammer to hit persistent abusers of user data. They want you to be careful with user data and not treat it like you own it; you do not. It is not yours to sell or share or publicize.
Edit; note as well that every country has a compliance office; if they know you are in complaince as in you are ‘good people’ (best effort, no giant holes etc; just best practice in our field which you should do anyway) they will not bother you with every (or any) user complaint after that. I have good experiences with this with far grave (and potentially criminally punishable) matters in a few EU countries.