Tomorrow the EU will announce the most far reaching reforms to data protection law ever (well, you know, other than when data protection was actually born, but that doesn’t count).
Viviane Reding, a ‘let’s get stuck in’ EU Commissioner, will announce plans to reform data protection laws across Europe and finally remove the many and varied versions of it that we have. So, big news for us all, whether we’re citizens or businesses. Key points:
- yes, we’re harmonising (yay!)
- yes, we’re giving more transparancy about what/how collected and used online (yay!)
- yes, we’re allowing proper deleting of stuff (big yay, bye bye that bad hair day photo!)
- yes, we’re allowing porting across platforms (nice one!)
- yes, we’re making people ‘fess up to their data indiscretions (ouch!)
- yes, we’ve yanked it into the Internet age (finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Video of VR:
Proper summary at WSJ online. The beast of a few hundred pages of detail out tomorrow, so will write again then.
Data, love it. (That’s for you Gary!)
Good ol’ Viviene. She’s not a lady to be messed with, I sense.
But as for the reforms, I definitely agree that the ‘yays’ are in order.
Very, very long overdue!
Posted by Law Actually | 26/01/2012, 12:49 pm