Most everybody has probably heard of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that has been sweeping across Europe, which is a data privacy legislation that went into effect end of May. Even though it originates in Europe, it effects US companies because it governs all European Union (EU) members, no matter where their data is collected.
Data privacy breaches under GDPR can carry huge penalties – up to 4 percent of a company’s annual global turnover, or €20 million (whichever is greater).
When it comes to privacy, what is the US doing about data privacy on its own turf? What are marketers thinking about these efforts?
David J. Redl, an assistant secretary of the US Department of Commerce, spoke last week to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at its IGF-USA 2018 conference about the Trump administration’s plans to work on data privacy issues. The statements that were made about data privacy laws hampering business progress echoed comments made in late May by Redl’s boss, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Ross wrote an impassioned critique of GDPR in London’s Financial Times just days after the European law went into effect, calling it “likely to create barriers to trade.”