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Title: Critics Call Proposed Changes To Landmark EU Privacy Law 'Death By a
Thousand Cuts'

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/10/22372...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Privacy activists say
proposed changes to Europe's landmark privacy law, including making it easier
for Big Tech to harvest Europeans' personal data for AI training, would flout
EU case law and gut the legislation. The changes proposed by the European
Commission are part of a drive to simplify a slew of laws adopted in recent
years on technology, environmental and financial issues which have in turn
faced pushback from companies and the U.S. government. EU antitrust chief
Henna Virkkunen will present the Digital Omnibus, in effect proposals to cut
red tape and overlapping legislation such as the General Data Protection
Regulation, the Artificial Intelligence Act, the e-Privacy Directive and the
Data Act, on November 19. According to the plans, Google, Meta Platforms,
OpenAI and other tech companies may be allowed to use Europeans' personal
data to train their AI models based on legitimate interest. In addition,
companies may be exempted from the ban on processing special categories of
personal data "in order not to disproportionately hinder the development and
operation of AI and taking into account the capabilities of the controller to
identify and remove special categories of personal data." [...] The proposals
would need to be thrashed out with EU countries and European Parliament in
the coming months before they can be implemented. "The draft Digital Omnibus
proposes countless changes to many different articles of the GDPR. In
combination this amounts to a death by a thousand cuts," Austrian privacy
group noyb said in a statement. "This would be a massive downgrading of
Europeans' privacy 10 years after the GDPR was adopted," noyb's Max Schrems
said. "These proposals would change how the EU protects what happens inside
your phone, computer and connected devices," European Digital Rights policy
advisor Itxaso Dominguez de Olazabal wrote in a LinkedIn post. "That means
access to your device could rely on legitimate interest or broad exemptions
like security, fraud detection or audience measurement," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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