Big tech pressure does the trick: EU moves to placate industry, privacy be damned

The European Commission insists it only wants to trim back its tech regulations through its “digital omnibus” package, but draft documents show that, in fact, the EU is about to sacrifice the bloc’s famous GDPR for the sake of AI. Activists aren’t happy.

According to experts and activists, the overhaul of existing legislation could enable big tech companies to collect significantly more user data for training their AI models. But that could come with a huge price tag, as Europeans would instantly lose important privacy protections.

Ironically, the reform is intended to bring targeted adjustments that simplify compliance for businesses.

But activists say that the leaked draft not only essentially gives AI companies like OpenAI or Google a blank check to suck up Europeans’ data but also signals crucial changes to core elements like the definition of “personal data” and all data subjects’ rights under the GDPR.

Moreover, the special protection of sensitive data, such as health data, political views, or sexual orientation, would be significantly reduced. The reform, leaked to POLITICO, would also enable remote access to personal data on PCs or smartphones without user consent.

In other words, activists argue, this appears to be a frontal assault on data privacy, benefiting only tech firms eager to freely train their AI models on user data.

“Is this the end of data protection and privacy as we have signed it into the EU treaty and the fundamental rights charter? The Commission should be fully aware that this is undermining European standards dramatically,” German politician Jan Philipp Albrecht, who as a former European Parliament member was one of the chief architects of the GDPR, told POLITICO.

Max Schrems, founder of noyb, a non-profit European Center for Digital Rights, charges that large parts of the reform draft violate European Conventions, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, or settled Court of Justice case-law.

“This would be a massive downgrading of European's privacy ten years after the GDPR was adopted. The draft is not helping small businesses, as promised, but again mainly benefiting big tech,” wrote Schrems.

The writing might have been on the wall, to be fair. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi mentioned the GDPR as hindering European innovation in artificial intelligence in his competitiveness report last year.

Tech giants have been busy behind the scenes – and out in the open. Last December, Meta’s then-president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, blasted EU authorities in an op-ed for having “dragged their feet” on data-for-AI decisions and blocking “growth and innovation.”

The draft is not helping small businesses, as promised, but again mainly benefiting big tech.

Max Schrems.

A year on, big tech is close to a massive win. If the final omnibus text aligns with the leaked draft, it appears that the Commission will propose explicitly recognizing that AI developers can rely on the GDPR’s legitimate interest legal basis to use personal data for training their systems.

Schrems, for one, suspects that EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen is trying to keep her rumored promise to US tech firms that the EU will review its rules and become more business-friendly.

The fight’s not over, though: the draft proposal might still change before the Commission officially unveils its plans on November 19th. Lukasz Olejnik, a privacy researcher and consultant, predicts the coming days to be “the Olympic Games of lobbying.”

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