"It's OK though, government X will only use GDPR for good and they will go easy on small companies and individuals infringing it".
Literally the argument you would eventually see at the end of threads about GDPR. I don't know how many times I've said this, but it amazes me that people can feel so identified and represented by nation-state politics that they are so willing to trust their government.
I don't feel "identified and represented by nation-state politics", whatever that means. But I do trust my democratically elected government to some extent. At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from.
And you're building a strawman with GDPR supporters, I don't think anybody said that nobody would ever try to abuse it. The GDPR has explicit provisions protecting journalists. It remains to be seen how this particular case pans out and if they truly manage to get the journalists to expose their source (or get heavily fined). If the Romanian authorities really manages to get this through and the rest of the Eurogroup doesn't react then yeah, that's quite worrying.
Also note that it's not like without the GDPR those journalists would be able to work peacefully anyway:
>Dragnea invoked the European data protection legislation last year when he threatened RISE Project with a lawsuit after journalists published stories on his connections to Tel Drum SA executives and other Romanian business people indicted for corruption and fraud.
>The president of the PSD never sued but soon after these threats were made, the Romanian Anti-Fraud Authority (ANAF) raided RISE Project’s offices, saying they suspected the organization of fraud. The investigation carried out by ANAF never uncovered any such fraud.
>RISE Project discovered that the initial complaint ANAF used to target RISE was a forgery filed by a non-existent person, with a non-existent physical address who falsely claimed that she worked as an accountant at the media house.
Due process is not really the keyword here from what I understand from this article. Something tells me that if it wasn't about the GDPR it would be something else.
> At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from.
I can't imagine that's true for investigative journalists reporting on corrupt governments. Big corporations do plenty of harm, but mostly in large-scale aggregate effects (like manipulating prices, tracking online behavior to deliver ads, creating filter bubbles in social networks, etc.), but governments can and do throw people in jail or worse.
>And you're building a strawman with GDPR supporters, I don't think anybody said that nobody would ever try to abuse it.
I don't think the accusation is fair. All discussions I saw here about GDPR contained the line where opponents were raising the issues of trust to authorities, and supporters dismissing them.
>But I do trust my democratically elected government to some extent. At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from.
Stasi operated in Germany just a few decades ago. Romania had Ceaușescu. But no, it's the evil corporations that are dangerous. The governments would never abuse human rights or anything like that.
> At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from.
Not I when I step back and assess potential and actual harms done. This is especially true the larger-scoped the laws and power given.
> And you're building a strawman with GDPR supporters, I don't think anybody said that nobody would ever try to abuse it.
Right, and the commenter didn't assert they did. The commenter quoted a phrase I too would hear frequently and questioned the trust people place in their institutions. Is there a term for a straw man straw man?
> If the Romanian authorities really manages to get this through and the rest of the Eurogroup doesn't react then yeah
Can the use of it as a threatening tool not be enough to require reaction? Must it get through? Why so much toleration?
You do not elect the government. Not in most states anyway and certainly not in Romania or the EU. Most governments are majority governments and the EC commissioners are appointed, not elected.
I wouldn't trust them even if I elected them, because people and especially politicians holding public office can and will eventually turn rogue.
But I agree with you that if it wasn't the GDPR it would be something else: alleged tax fraud, money laundering, you name it. Stuff taken out of their own playbook. It's is just blackmail and racketeering executed by state insitutions. This is why we need strong checks and balances against state institutions and time limits for holding office against politicians.
I don't trust the companies that the GDPR is targeting either - who are more involved in my life on a day-to-day basis and can have as much or more effect on it, short of literally putting me in a cell. Information is power, and it's generally private companies wielding it. We exist in a society where companies and Government and the people all continually back each other up in oppressing people.
Fact of the matter is, that the GDPR is a pile of shit (it's basically an argument that only the Government should be allowed to amass and weaponise information, where I'd argue that nobody should be allowed to), but so is the mass centralisation of information in the hands of large, powerful entities that it's intended to target. And one would be entirely unnecessary and unwarranted without the other.
