Saturday, May 26, 2018

GDPR: Europe regulates the world's technologies it lacks the imagination to create.

My ancestors came to the United States of America (USA) to avoid the creation of the European Union (EU) decades later and its most recent annoyance: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We've been deluged with ridiculous messages about this, some from tech companies we didn't even know existed. The big USA tech companies impacted most (Google and Facebook) are the same ones, which for years have been doing back flips in the opposite direction assisting Communist China in restricting and monitoring data communication of its citizens. The only consistency is: show me the money!

How the heck does EU have the authority to regulate USA? How does EU have the power to fine USA companies not just on their revenue in the EU but worldwide? And why is the USA, both government and tech industry, so wimpy on all this?

I'd suggest that EU confine itself to regulating its own tech companies but that would be silly since EU doesn't have any worth mentioning in the same sentence as Google.

I have three simple blogs, including this one, which have generated $100 in ad revenue in the last decade from Google AdSense. I received a message about that, which implies that if I do not agree to EU terms, my monetary relationship, minuscule as it is, will be terminated. I do not intend to comply.

Check out part of the message:


from:Google AdSense adsense-noreply@google.com
reply-to:Google AdSense
to:me
date:Thu, May 17, 2018 at 5:22 PM
subject:[Action Required] Please review updated AdSense Terms of Service
mailed-by:scoutcamp.bounces.google.com
signed-by:google.com

Furthermore, the updated terms introduce new data protection terms related to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other EU privacy frameworks. Specifically, the updated terms incorporate our controller-controller terms and our updated EU User consent policy (learn more here).
Action Required: Please sign in to your AdSense account to review and accept the updated Terms of Service. We recommend that you consult your legal advisor in case you have questions about the terms.
SIGN IN TO ADSENSE
We would also like to encourage you to, by May 25, 2018, engage with the recently launched Ad Technology Provider (ATP) Controls to both choose the ad technology providers who will be able to serve and measure ads on your sites and apps for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) as well as provide EEA users with the option to see non-personalized ads (if that is what you decide to do).
If you have any questions about this update, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your account team or contact us via Help Center.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
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