“Rarely has hype so contrasted with impact” is a fitting assessment of the GDPR’s first five years, offered by Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the Open Markets Institute.
The various fines levied by data privacy authorities through the years, and the media’s gleeful reporting about ever-higher fines, have been terrific to increase public awareness about privacy issues. The latest and largest fine yet, €1.2bn levied against Meta by the Irish regulator for violating GDPR rules that require certain safeguards to be in place when data is transferred between Europe and America, has made headlines around the world.
But, as Johnny Ryan says in a withering assessment of GDPR enforcement and the impact fines will have, “the truth is that even a penalty of this size is of little consequence to a company that made a net profit of more than $23bn last year.”
Ready his essay in The Economist https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/05/24/dont-be-fooled-by-metas-fine-for-data-breaches-says-johnny-ryan
