UK to replace GDPR with its own data privacy law

Happy Thursday everybody! In this edition of Privacy Insider, we cover some news about recent updates to data privacy laws. Specifically, the UK has announced it will move away from the GDPR and develop its own data privacy law, and the Biden administration received input on what a future US privacy law should look like.

This raises what is one of the core challenges to data privacy today; there are just too many laws with too many different requirements.

Some folks in the data privacy world hold the assumption that eventually these laws will standardize, and there will be roughly one agreed-upon approach to handling data privacy, no matter where your business is located. That’s certainly the hope of international businesses, who have to dedicate a significant amount of resources toward becoming compliant in every jurisdiction they have customers.

But there are a few reasons why data privacy regulation standardization isn’t a certainty. For one, it would require international governments to agree on some pretty major issues. The EU’s allergy to US intelligence agencies’ broad surveillance powers has already blown up several international data transfer agreements, for instance.

Another issue is the pace at which legislation moves. Data privacy regulations are, in the grand scheme of things, very new. As our newsletter today demonstrates, they’re still being created, diversifying, and branching off from one another. How long will it take for governments and organizations to agree upon and enact a common framework?

Lastly, there’s the fact that data privacy isn’t solely a legal issue, but also a technological and, in many ways, cultural issue too. We may agree on the legal rules around data privacy, but the way we collect, store, and disseminate data may not be the same tomorrow as it is today. What constitutes “privacy” today might not be what “privacy” is tomorrow.

When people talk about data privacy standardization, they’re really talking about data privacy simplification. Fundamentally, however, data privacy is complicated. But that’s why we’re in the business that we’re in—to make data privacy simpler.

Best,
Arlo

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