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The UK has all the EU laws it had before Brexit. It needs a new law in the UK to remove existing things. UK will not lose protection until the UK decides upon i

The UK has all the EU laws it had before Brexit. It needs a new law in the UK to remove existing things. UK will not lose protection until the UK decides upon it.

Seenso 7y ago
> The UK has all the EU laws it had before Brexit. It needs a new law in the UK to remove existing things. UK will not lose protection until the UK decides upon it. Not quite all of EU law will be retained: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8375 https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...: > [T]he UK is specifically not retaining: > * the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; > * the legislative instruments known as EU directives themselves (as opposed to the legislation implementing them or rights and obligations under them, which will be retained); > * the principle of supremacy of EU law (for prospective legislation); and > * the Francovich principle of state liability (in relation to post exit facts).
- kzrdude 7y ago
  Exiting the jurisdiction of European Court of Justice should be a rather big change in theory as well
- irthomasthomas 7y ago
  Britain never was bound by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Read the small print.... Protocol 30: ON THE APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TO POLAND AND TO THE UNITED KINGDOM... 1. The Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice of the European Union, or any court or tribunal of Poland or of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of Poland or of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms. 2. In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law. Article 2 To the extent that a provision of the Charter refers to national laws and practices, it shall only apply to Poland or the United Kingdom to the extent that the rights or principles that it contains are recognised in the law or practices of Poland or of the United Kingdom.
  - blibble 7y ago
    the ECJ ruled that opt-out to be meaningless in 2011 > "... does not intend to exempt the Republic of Poland or the United Kingdom from the obligation to comply with the provisions of the Charter or to prevent a court of one of those Member States from ensuring compliance with those provisions" this is a common criticism of the EU and the ECJ: what was negotiated by the member states during treaty revision is irrelevant if the ECJ can strike out whichever bits of it pleases at will (with no appeal/recourse possible)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mtgx 7y ago
      And pretty much ever since the GCHQ/conservative UK government have been freaking out about it and it's been one of the main reasons they wanted out of the EU. The GCHQ really, REALLY wanted out of the fundamental charters of rights. I mean the ECJ has ruled like twice or thrice against their mass surveillance activities, but they've managed to buy time by "updating the law" in ways in which a new ruling was needed to show once again that their mass surveillance laws are STILL violating the charter.
      - andy_ppp 7y ago
        I found your comment really interesting, I think there are quite a few vested interests involved in the desire to leave the EU. This and most notably the work on tax havens the EU was doing, the UK being one of the biggest with several opaque jurisdictions being under its control. Saying GCHQ doesn’t make political decisions by downvoting this is extremely naive.
        dhauddye 7y ago
        What's the value of acknowledging that some vested interests hold the view though? At face value I mean. There are lots of legitimate economic reasons to consider leaving the EU, it's not the unilaterally bad decision that's become a meme around here and Reddit, the reason I say this being that it shouldn't be surprising in and of itself as a decision.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
The article basically claims that google won't bother to follow developments in UK regulation, and instead ask all users to accept a move to US regulation. Presumably this means stopping service for those that don't accept.
- krick 7y ago
  So, basically: "Fuck your laws, you won't dare to do anything, because your citizens cannot live without us anyway, lol"?
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    If that were the claim, it wouldn't work. It could only work if the citizens could live without it. If it's necessary, then it will simply mean a little more money for a few more features (needed for France and Germany anyway) will let the company rake it in, so they will comply.
    - krick 7y ago
      I don't understand what you are saying. I see it only working if citizens couldn't live without it, because if they can government can just forbid Google from operating in their jurisdiction, e.g. by simply blocking them. On the contrary, if it's necessary, it's Google who has leverage in the case of the conflict with the foreign government.
- dddbbb 7y ago
  > An employee familiar with the planned move said that British privacy rules, which at least for now track GDPR, would continue to apply to that government’s requests for data from Google’s U.S. headquarters. It quite literally says the opposite of that. I don't think Google could continue to do business in the UK if they just ignore regulation, nor could they ask users to waive their own rights. All this seems to be is moving the location at which data-related requests for the UK are handled, which is probably because the Irish office is smaller and it is easier to keep them focussed solely on EU law.
TheRealPomax 7y ago
Except not quite: while the UK will have laws that effectively mirror the GDPR, the crucial difference is that it's now a UK law, not a European law, and there is no EU enforcement of that UK law. UK citizens also won't be able to appeal all the way up the EU courts: it stops at the UK supreme court. And most importantly: now that the UK is out of the EU, it is a tiny, barely relevant factor in multinational corporate online practice. Any business that gets told by the UK to follow their GDPR can quite comfortably go "lol, no" and barely affect their bottom line, as opposed to having the entire EU block go "obey our GDPR or we won't let you do business in any of these 27 nations, a large portion of which make up a substantial cut of your global revenue". The biggest players won't, of course, but smaller companies?
- nihonde 7y ago
  If the compelling threat was not being able to do business in the EU, then that business was and remains subject to GDPR anyway.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Since the laws are identical wouldn’t it still mean that any business complying with the GDPR (in order to do business in the EU) would already comply with the UK’s version of it, and vice versa? How can you comply with one but not another given they are exact copies of each other?
  - celticninja 7y ago
    You can collect and sell UK user data, so they don't need to change anything, they can just sell UK user data without worrying about gdpr
    - matthewheath 7y ago
      Are you able to cite your source for this? The UK transposed GDPR into its domestic legislation so this shouldn't be possible at the moment.
makomk 7y ago
The title seems to be misleading. According to the article, Google isn't removing data protection from UK users, it's moving their data to the US (which in theory would be compliant with EU data protection laws even for EU citizens, though there are some arguments stuck in the courts that it shouldn't be) whilst following the same rules. This is most likely the result of some rather messy political disputes between the EU and the UK over data hosting and the GDPR that don't look like they're going to be solved any time soon.
- ThePhysicist 7y ago
  It might be compliant to move data from the EU to the US under the privacy shield agreement, but this agreement might soon be dead as there is a court case against it (for good reason): https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/more-legal-uncertainty-for-privacy-shield-ahead-of-crux-ruling-by-europes-top-court https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/more-legal-uncertainty-for... So it’s not unlikely that the US and UK will be considered unsafe countries for handling personal data of EU citizens due to their aggressive stance on digital spying and surveillance.
- krageon 7y ago
  > Google isn't removing data protection from UK users, it's moving their data to the US This means that Google is removing data protection from UK users. There is absolutely no way to claim in good faith that you can protect your users when the data exists (or is touched in any way by, but that's another story) in the US, the examples for which we've seen often enough that every reader can be assumed to be familiar with them by now.
  - makomk 7y ago
    The EU's position is that you can, in fact, claim in good faith that you're protecting your users when the data exists in the US, despite evidence to the contrary. There have been a few court cases about this, one of which is currently in progress, and at least one of which they lost and carried on doing it anyway. In any case, it's not something you can rely on EU data protection rules to protect against right now. On the other hand, the EU has been threatening to refuse to agree on the same for the UK, despite both having the exact same data protection frameworks as it currently stands. The actual rules have at least as much to do with internaational politics as they do with protecting people's privacy.
clouddrover 7y ago
Why won't the UK get those new laws? Now that Britain has Brexited it needs to make a trade deal with the US. Why won't the US insist on things like lesser data protections and software patents as part of the trade deal? Now that Britain is in a weaker bargaining position, how will it avoid implementing these things?
- shawabawa3 7y ago
  it might, in fact it's even likely. However it hasn't happened yet, so we don't know. What we do know is that there will need to be an act of parliament and we won't just magically lose protections at some arbitrary date
  - M2Ys4U 7y ago
    It happened a year ago! On the 28th February 2019 The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019[0] was made. These Regulations basically patch the GDPR to remove the buts about working with supervisory authorities in the EU, changes the references to supervisory authorities to name the Information Commissioner, confers power on the Secretary of State instead of the Commission and stuff like that. The substantive provisions of the GDPR remain unchanged. There's what's known as a "Keeling Schedule" (which is essentially a visual diff of the changes) available as well.[1] [0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/419/introduction/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/419/introduction/ma... [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779335/Keeling_Schedule_for_GDPR.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Lio 7y ago
I’d have more faith if the heads of US corporations showed up when summoned to parliament. Recent examples include Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook over Cambridge Analytica) and Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft; reneged on promises to UK government over take over of Cadburys. Refused 3 times). Or if we were able to successfully extradite US suspects in the same way our citizens could be extradited to US. Recent examples are.. so numerous and high profile you can just google yourselves. The UK might not have a “small” economy right now whilst we’re still in the transition phase but we’re still not powerful enough to get justice from US corporations as it is. How will the balance of power shift after we’ve negotiated new trade agreements from a position of weakness?
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  A parliamentary summons has no legal enforceability and a number of British nationals, resident in the UK also declined to show up.

The UK has all the EU laws it had before Brexit. It needs a new law in the UK to remove existing things. UK will not lose protection until the UK decides upon it.

Seenso 7y ago

> The UK has all the EU laws it had before Brexit. It needs a new law in the UK to remove existing things. UK will not lose protection until the UK decides upon it. Not quite all of EU law will be retained: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8375 https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...: > [T]he UK is specifically not retaining: > * the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; > * the legislative instruments known as EU directives themselves (as opposed to the legislation implementing them or rights and obligations under them, which will be retained); > * the principle of supremacy of EU law (for prospective legislation); and > * the Francovich principle of state liability (in relation to post exit facts).

kzrdude 7y ago
Exiting the jurisdiction of European Court of Justice should be a rather big change in theory as well
irthomasthomas 7y ago
Britain never was bound by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Read the small print.... Protocol 30: ON THE APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TO POLAND AND TO THE UNITED KINGDOM... 1. The Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice of the European Union, or any court or tribunal of Poland or of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of Poland or of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms. 2. In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law. Article 2 To the extent that a provision of the Charter refers to national laws and practices, it shall only apply to Poland or the United Kingdom to the extent that the rights or principles that it contains are recognised in the law or practices of Poland or of the United Kingdom.
- blibble 7y ago
  the ECJ ruled that opt-out to be meaningless in 2011 > "... does not intend to exempt the Republic of Poland or the United Kingdom from the obligation to comply with the provisions of the Charter or to prevent a court of one of those Member States from ensuring compliance with those provisions" this is a common criticism of the EU and the ECJ: what was negotiated by the member states during treaty revision is irrelevant if the ECJ can strike out whichever bits of it pleases at will (with no appeal/recourse possible)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtgx 7y ago
    And pretty much ever since the GCHQ/conservative UK government have been freaking out about it and it's been one of the main reasons they wanted out of the EU. The GCHQ really, REALLY wanted out of the fundamental charters of rights. I mean the ECJ has ruled like twice or thrice against their mass surveillance activities, but they've managed to buy time by "updating the law" in ways in which a new ruling was needed to show once again that their mass surveillance laws are STILL violating the charter.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I found your comment really interesting, I think there are quite a few vested interests involved in the desire to leave the EU. This and most notably the work on tax havens the EU was doing, the UK being one of the biggest with several opaque jurisdictions being under its control. Saying GCHQ doesn’t make political decisions by downvoting this is extremely naive.
      - dhauddye 7y ago
        What's the value of acknowledging that some vested interests hold the view though? At face value I mean. There are lots of legitimate economic reasons to consider leaving the EU, it's not the unilaterally bad decision that's become a meme around here and Reddit, the reason I say this being that it shouldn't be surprising in and of itself as a decision.

SiempreViernes 7y ago

The article basically claims that google won't bother to follow developments in UK regulation, and instead ask all users to accept a move to US regulation. Presumably this means stopping service for those that don't accept.

krick 7y ago
So, basically: "Fuck your laws, you won't dare to do anything, because your citizens cannot live without us anyway, lol"?
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  If that were the claim, it wouldn't work. It could only work if the citizens could live without it. If it's necessary, then it will simply mean a little more money for a few more features (needed for France and Germany anyway) will let the company rake it in, so they will comply.
  - krick 7y ago
    I don't understand what you are saying. I see it only working if citizens couldn't live without it, because if they can government can just forbid Google from operating in their jurisdiction, e.g. by simply blocking them. On the contrary, if it's necessary, it's Google who has leverage in the case of the conflict with the foreign government.
dddbbb 7y ago
> An employee familiar with the planned move said that British privacy rules, which at least for now track GDPR, would continue to apply to that government’s requests for data from Google’s U.S. headquarters. It quite literally says the opposite of that. I don't think Google could continue to do business in the UK if they just ignore regulation, nor could they ask users to waive their own rights. All this seems to be is moving the location at which data-related requests for the UK are handled, which is probably because the Irish office is smaller and it is easier to keep them focussed solely on EU law.

TheRealPomax 7y ago

Except not quite: while the UK will have laws that effectively mirror the GDPR, the crucial difference is that it's now a UK law, not a European law, and there is no EU enforcement of that UK law. UK citizens also won't be able to appeal all the way up the EU courts: it stops at the UK supreme court. And most importantly: now that the UK is out of the EU, it is a tiny, barely relevant factor in multinational corporate online practice. Any business that gets told by the UK to follow their GDPR can quite comfortably go "lol, no" and barely affect their bottom line, as opposed to having the entire EU block go "obey our GDPR or we won't let you do business in any of these 27 nations, a large portion of which make up a substantial cut of your global revenue". The biggest players won't, of course, but smaller companies?

nihonde 7y ago
If the compelling threat was not being able to do business in the EU, then that business was and remains subject to GDPR anyway.
Nextgrid 7y ago
Since the laws are identical wouldn’t it still mean that any business complying with the GDPR (in order to do business in the EU) would already comply with the UK’s version of it, and vice versa? How can you comply with one but not another given they are exact copies of each other?
- celticninja 7y ago
  You can collect and sell UK user data, so they don't need to change anything, they can just sell UK user data without worrying about gdpr
  - matthewheath 7y ago
    Are you able to cite your source for this? The UK transposed GDPR into its domestic legislation so this shouldn't be possible at the moment.

makomk 7y ago

The title seems to be misleading. According to the article, Google isn't removing data protection from UK users, it's moving their data to the US (which in theory would be compliant with EU data protection laws even for EU citizens, though there are some arguments stuck in the courts that it shouldn't be) whilst following the same rules. This is most likely the result of some rather messy political disputes between the EU and the UK over data hosting and the GDPR that don't look like they're going to be solved any time soon.

ThePhysicist 7y ago
It might be compliant to move data from the EU to the US under the privacy shield agreement, but this agreement might soon be dead as there is a court case against it (for good reason): https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/more-legal-uncertainty-for-privacy-shield-ahead-of-crux-ruling-by-europes-top-court https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/more-legal-uncertainty-for... So it’s not unlikely that the US and UK will be considered unsafe countries for handling personal data of EU citizens due to their aggressive stance on digital spying and surveillance.
krageon 7y ago
> Google isn't removing data protection from UK users, it's moving their data to the US This means that Google is removing data protection from UK users. There is absolutely no way to claim in good faith that you can protect your users when the data exists (or is touched in any way by, but that's another story) in the US, the examples for which we've seen often enough that every reader can be assumed to be familiar with them by now.
- makomk 7y ago
  The EU's position is that you can, in fact, claim in good faith that you're protecting your users when the data exists in the US, despite evidence to the contrary. There have been a few court cases about this, one of which is currently in progress, and at least one of which they lost and carried on doing it anyway. In any case, it's not something you can rely on EU data protection rules to protect against right now. On the other hand, the EU has been threatening to refuse to agree on the same for the UK, despite both having the exact same data protection frameworks as it currently stands. The actual rules have at least as much to do with internaational politics as they do with protecting people's privacy.

clouddrover 7y ago

Why won't the UK get those new laws? Now that Britain has Brexited it needs to make a trade deal with the US. Why won't the US insist on things like lesser data protections and software patents as part of the trade deal? Now that Britain is in a weaker bargaining position, how will it avoid implementing these things?

shawabawa3 7y ago
it might, in fact it's even likely. However it hasn't happened yet, so we don't know. What we do know is that there will need to be an act of parliament and we won't just magically lose protections at some arbitrary date
- M2Ys4U 7y ago
  It happened a year ago! On the 28th February 2019 The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019[0] was made. These Regulations basically patch the GDPR to remove the buts about working with supervisory authorities in the EU, changes the references to supervisory authorities to name the Information Commissioner, confers power on the Secretary of State instead of the Commission and stuff like that. The substantive provisions of the GDPR remain unchanged. There's what's known as a "Keeling Schedule" (which is essentially a visual diff of the changes) available as well.[1] [0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/419/introduction/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/419/introduction/ma... [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779335/Keeling_Schedule_for_GDPR.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Lio 7y ago

I’d have more faith if the heads of US corporations showed up when summoned to parliament. Recent examples include Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook over Cambridge Analytica) and Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft; reneged on promises to UK government over take over of Cadburys. Refused 3 times). Or if we were able to successfully extradite US suspects in the same way our citizens could be extradited to US. Recent examples are.. so numerous and high profile you can just google yourselves. The UK might not have a “small” economy right now whilst we’re still in the transition phase but we’re still not powerful enough to get justice from US corporations as it is. How will the balance of power shift after we’ve negotiated new trade agreements from a position of weakness?

Mvandenbergh 7y ago
A parliamentary summons has no legal enforceability and a number of British nationals, resident in the UK also declined to show up.