Banners requesting approval to gather cookies might be phased out in the UK, as they are regarded too onerous for consumers and companies. If the regulatory gap becomes too great, the EU may reconsider its data-sharing deal.
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| [Data Center] |
The UK wants to be free of EU data protection laws after Brexit. The Minister of Culture, Oliver Dowden, published the outline of a reform in the "Telegraph" on Thursday, which could lead to a growing divergence between UK law and the European Union's general data protection rules (RGPD), which have been in effect since 2018, and whose goal is to give users control over the collection of their data.
Oliver Dowden, in typical 'Brexit' hyperbole, described this endeavor as one of the 'major benefits' of 'Leave,' citing the EU legislation as having resulted in 'a lot of needless bureaucracy and checkboxes.' He criticizes the restrictions that small enterprises face. He says, "You can't expect the same from a small family business and a massive social network."
Collecting cookies
The minister proposes that banners asking for authorisation to gather cookies, which display when a website is loaded, be removed from the UK. The British government wants a regime that is "even more ambitious, favorable to growth and innovation, but which is always supported by reliable standards of protection of private life" without specifying what would replace this rationale. In light of this, the ministry has initiated a dialogue with experts.
The UK is addressing a topic that is close to users by changing its data protection regulations. Tech firms are aware of this danger and seek a structure that protects them. “The public must have faith in this new path,” said Matthew Evans, director of marketing at TechUK. "We applaud the government's commitment to high protection standards as well as the technical assessment."
Unfair competition
The European Commission will closely monitor the change, concerned that the UK does not establish a kind of unfair competition at Europe's borders. Data problems have been at the center of the Brexit debates, crystallizing this anxiety.
London received an equivalency agreement with the EU at the end of June, which is critical for data sharing between firms in various countries. Navigation, messaging, and online banking services would have had to bear significantly higher prices if there had been no such agreement. If the temptation of British deregulation becomes too strong, the EU has warned that this agreement may be called into question. Only data submitted by countries with regulations that European services deem "adequate" can be transmitted to the EU.
Meanwhile, the UK has declared its desire to establish sharing arrangements with other nations, including the US, Australia, and South Korea. John Edwards, the new data protection commissioner, will be in charge of assisting these initiatives.