Edward Snowden Says EU's GDPR Gives A False Sense Of Reassurance

According to American Whistleblower Edward Snowden, the EU’s data protection laws that came into force in the aftermath of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal is nothing but a “paper tiger”.

The former NSA employee recently spoke at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal via video feed from Russia. [Snowden is living the life of a political refugee in Russia for the last six years.]

For those who don’t know, Edward Snowden released classified government documents to international media back in 2013, therefore, revealing the unethical mass surveillance activities conducted by the NSA.

GDPR is missing the point

“I think the mistake it makes is actually in the name; the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) misplaces the problem,” Snowden told at the conference.

Snowden’s primary argument is that while GDPR is a good effort, it completely misses the point. According to him, the EU’s data regulation law normalizes the data collection practices of major tech giants.

It’s ok to spy on everyone all the time whether they are your customers or your citizens…so long as it never leaks, so long as only you are in control of what it is that you’ve stolen from everybody

Need fines every year

Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws came into effect on May 25th, 2018. The idea is to give individuals greater control of their personal data.

Since the enactment of the laws, Facebook and Google, both have been fined for over millions of dollars. However, Snowden likes to believe that it’s not enough.

Until we see those fines being applied every single year to the internet giants… it is a paper tiger that actually gives us a false sense of reassurance.

While at the conference, he also adds that data collection business models of tech giants such as Google and Facebook tantamount to “abuse…yet every bit of it, they argue, is legal.”

This is not the first time Snowden has condemned the data collection practices of tech giants. A few days ago, Edward told Joe Rogan that it’s a “mistake” to think Facebook is less dangerous to user’s privacy than NSA.