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Describes EU ‘Light Touch’

Takeaway From EU’s Jourova Privacy Meetings With Senators: Need to Do Something

The main message from senators working on privacy legislation is that “we need to do something,” European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova told the Brookings Institution. She told reporters afterward she met with Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. Jourova was also scheduled to meet with FTC Chairman Joe Simons Thursday.

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Jourova supports a light-touch approach to tech enforcement, which she said the European Commission has carried out. Hopefully, incoming commissioners maintain that soft touch, she said. The answer isn't to break up big tech companies, she said, but to extend democratic values online, with a solid foundation of freedom and fairness. Ex-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler thinks such companies should share data rather than being broken up, he said earlier Thursday (see 1904110025).

The U.S. and EU are facing similar challenges, Jourova said, like election manipulation through social media. Elections should be competitions of ideas, not competitions for who can best use dirty money, she said, citing the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach.

Jourova described two camps responding to privacy. One, which includes the EU, understands the need for more control over data and that all players have to respect limitations. The second has a lax approach to privacy, favoring uncontrolled access to data in the name of business and government, she said. “I want the U.S. to join the first camp.”

Jourova noted good relationships with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the FTC in maintaining the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. But she said the EU had to wait too long, about two years, for the administration to name a permanent PS ombudsperson.

Jourova warned against algorithms being used for political purposes. Algorithms work well for selling consumers products, she said, but they shouldn’t be used to sell political candidates. Platforms shouldn’t moderate political debates and influence votes, she said, calling the possibility “dangerous.”

Jourova praised impacts of the EU’s general data protection regulation, which she said has shifted the focus of privacy onto consumer control: “We should continue to put people first.” None of the doomsday scenarios about the GDPR has come true, she said. But policies like this are only part of the solution, she said, warning policymakers not to “overdue” it. Social media shouldn’t be blamed for all social ills, she said.