On Friday, 21 October, the Wales Cross Party Group on Digital Rights, of which Open Rights Group (ORG) is the secretariat, held an online event discussing the EU and digital trade post-Brexit and in the wake of new legislation. How easy will it be for trade between the EU and the UK when the UK is watering down the inherited General Data Protection Regulation enshrined within the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU must maintain equivalency for trade to take place?
To answer that question, Mariano Delli Santi, ORG’s legal and policy officer, broke down how incoming legislation will cause problems for the UK and EU’s trade experience. Valentina Palace, a legal researcher from the Ada Lovelace Institute (ALI), also spoke about the missed opportunity of the new legislation to redress the power imbalance between data subjects and data controllers. Meanwhile, Ceri Williams from Wales Trade Union Congress (TUC) relayed the impact of reforms on workers’ rights. The event was chaired by Sarah Murphy, MP from the Welsh Senedd keen to raise the issue of digital rights on the agenda in Wales.
Digital rights are human rights
“Data protection is recognised in Europe and increasingly throughout the world as a human right,” iterated delli Santi, opening the presentation, emphasising the protections currently afforded by the GDPR. He stated how important enhanced data protection rules are when new technology allows personal information to be more available than ever. Credit agencies, employers, and schools all have access to our data. One
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