Doesn’t the GDPR go back to a largely grassroots effort, including from members of the Pirate Party phenomenon that people initially scoffed at? I have no doubt that there has been local IT lobbying, but one cannot deny some level of true popular will.
I very much doubt this was anywhere near "grassroots" to the italians
That is not even how eu politics work
And a single member in the French parliament (900+) ever listened to pro-liberty lobbies like lqdn, and fought for it. So yes, it's pretty grassroots.
And I'm arguing against 'it's not grassroot'. My argument is that it's as grassroot as support for Snowden, wikilealks, whistle-blower protection. Because all of the was in the 2011 pirate party manifesto. It happened that only this legislation caught interest of other parties, but it's origin is grassroot. Have you heard of framasoft?
I have never even heard anyone suggest such a thing. Whether a fringe grassroots privacy politics effort existed in Sweden at the time is not up for debate. It absolutely did, but it was not "popular" by any stretch of the imagination. Average voters simply don't care about privacy, no matter which country you're in.
The EU was explicitly formed to compete with the US economically. Nobody should be surprised if their most flagship legislation to date is motivated by the same intent.
Furthermore, it is being generous to say the EU is a pseudo-democratic institution. If an actually popular privacy movement did exist in Sweden at some point, the chances of it penetrating the EU are slim to none, and the chances of it having any political influence in the EU are even lower.
Go tell Germans that with their very recent memories of Stasi. You can even tell Swedes that with their very explicit laws against mixing and accessing various government databases.
> Nobody should be surprised if their most flagship legislation to date is motivated by the same intent.
Instead of parroting whatever the latest internet conspiracy is, you could actually go and read the legislation, and have an opinion of your own.
Google is so afraid of the EU legislators that they have literally plastered the whole of Brussels Airport ('Zaventem' for the locals) with wall to wall ads on how fantastically pro-end-user privacy they are. It's comical.
US courts have in the past repeatedly forced EU companies to divulge personal data and business information, in US lawsuits (discovery etc..). The reasons the US justices always gave for allowing this, was that there were no sanctions for these EU companies making it illegal to cooperate with such judicial processes.
The GDPR expressly forbids this and also applies tough sanctions on companies and regimes that try to force it. By making it illegal to do business with such countries.
This is why Privacy Shield is so important for the US and the EU, it hashes out to what extent the US may infringe on EU data sovereignty. And vice-versa.