Why GDPR is a Bigger Problem than Privacy

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Digital privacy is a challenge. GDPR and its siblings make it worse. We need a reset. And then some serious effort to understand the problem. Something the GDPR creators never took the time to. Possibly the most expensive — and detrimental — ‘blind-leading-the-blind’ exercise of all time.

Tim O’Reilly’s article Data is the new sand was an eye-opener. A different, pragmatic and insightful angle on privacy, data, mindset and value. Without saying so, O’Reilly implies that our attempts to regulate privacy are worse than broken, even counter-productive.

To put it bluntly — and this is my take, not O’Reilly’s: What started as a quest for improved privacy is heading into a regime in which lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats compete for the right to rule, to define the rules and to protect something they don’t understand against threats they don’t understand — allegedly for our, the people’s — benefit. And to top it off, we — the people — don’t understand it either. It’s a blind leading the blind situation if we ever saw one. And it’s getting worse by the month. Every case that is litigated, regardless of location, is followed by scores of discussions, comments, analyses etc. from ‘experts’, journalists and politicians, about how bad the situation is, the need for improvement and the importance of the issue. The spiralling complexity gets another (useless) turn and no one is hitting the brakes, asking if we’re on the right track. Very few seem to have taken the time to see and understand the full picture, and those who do are conspicuously subdued.

The ‘good’ thing is — we’re creating a lot of new jobs that undoubtedly feel important to those involved. The bad is that it’s all useless, the jobs are really ‘ Bullshit Jobs ‘ as defined in David Graeber’s famous bestseller. Actually, they’re even worse than useless. The regime is creating an illusion of care, protection and importance, thus defocusing any attempt to understand the real picture and find out what the real problem is and what we need to get ahead.

‘And what is that exactly’ you’re asking. What is it we really need? The answer isn’t what you’d like to…