A bill is currently making its way through the parliament of the United
Kingdom, which could grant the country’s government with extraordinary new financial surveillance powers.
The Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) bill proposes
changes to the U.K.’s General Data Protection Regulations, which provide
the foundation for the rules and principles that govern how
organizations within the U.K. use personal data.
Lawyers, academics and other privacy activists are warning that the changes being proposed by the DPDI would actually erode the privacy rights of British citizens, especially in the context of personal data.
One main concern is that the DPDI gives banks expanded powers to monitor the accounts of private citizens
under the premise of being on the lookout for fraud and errors in
welfare payouts. If banks find concerns, they can flag the accounts of
people who meet as-yet-unpublished criteria to the government.
Another cause for concern is the fact that the DPDI bill removes
the right of British citizens to not be subjected to automated
decision-making without their consent, especially where the decision has
a profound legal or “similarly significant effect.” The government
claims it will replace this right with safeguards, but critics have
warned that these are “inadequate.”
Other critics have highlighted how the DPDI weakens crucial data protection rights and could leave people in Britain even more vulnerable to exploitation, especially by tech giants.
“The effects will be stark. The power imbalance between
individuals and large corporations, especially Big Tech and public
services, will widen drastically,” said Ann Kristin Glenster of the University of Cambridge.
“Data protection was meant to guarantee fundamental rights that
could not be sold or bartered away. The [DPDI] does just that,” warned
Glenster.
Brexit, economic interests influencing British government’s push to pass DPDI
Analysts have pointed out that the British government is very
interested in passing the DPDI so that it could create a more
“business-friendly regime” within the country, especially when the data
of Brits is transferred to continental Europe.
Currently, businesses in the U.K. and the EU can freely share
personal data across borders. But the DPDI could weaken the levels of
protection given to data in Britain when compared to the protections
given in the European Union.
To prevent any potential breaches of data, the EU could restrict
data transfers between the bloc and the U.K., presenting businesses on
both sides of the English Channel with major bureaucratic challenges.
Since leaving the EU, data the continent receives from the U.K.
has benefited from an “adequacy decision” made by the European
Commission, which indicates that the transfer of personal data from
Europe to third countries is prohibited if those countries do not
guarantee an “adequate level of protection” for the data. Some third
countries, such as the United States, are judged to have sufficiently
robust data protection laws to be granted an “adequacy finding,”
enabling the free flow of personal data to continue.
But the U.K.’s coverage under this adequacy decision rests on
Britain not diverging from European data protection standards. If it
does, the Commission can and will revoke the adequacy decision.
If this happens, transfers of data from the U.K., to the EU and
then to third countries will rest on businesses being responsible for
implementing their own safeguards to ensure that the data is protected
to sufficient standards, raising concerns that corporations – especially
large and highly influential ones – might not fulfill the mandate of
providing sufficient protections for personal data.
Nevertheless, the British government has hailed the latest
version of the DPDI bill as a “Brexit dividend” that would create a more
business-friendly data protection regime within the U.K. that supposedly upholds individual rights to privacy while at the same time promoting growth and innovation.
According to the government, the DPDI bill “would seize the
post-Brexit opportunity to boost the economy by 4.7 billion pounds
[$5.97 billion] over the next decade.”
Watch this clip of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently under arrest in the U.K., speaking about the importance of free speech.
(Article by Arsenio Toledo republished from NaturalNews.com)
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Author: Planet Today
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