Silly and worrying aspects about GDPR

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

The acronym GDPR comes trippingly off all our tongues at this stage even if we don’t know the letters stand for General Data Protection Regulation. It’s a piece of law which regulates information privacy within the European Union, including Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

I well appreciate the importance of the legislation, which has now been in force across the EU since 2018. Indeed for many people it may not at all impede on their lives but over the last few years I have seen it being used as an excuse for all sorts of laziness, obfuscation and pure inefficiencies, lies too.

Sometimes I get the impression that it is a great tool at the service of those who don’t want you to know information that you are entitled to have.

I can recall being on a finance committee where a member asked for information on a person’s salary. 

They were told by the employer that because of GDPR they were unable to further that information. Of course it was nonsense and I knew at the time but, to my shame,  I said nothing.

I get the impression those four letters GDPR are a great way of frightening people. 

There are also silly aspects about it.

If you walk into a hospital and ask at reception if J Bloggs is a patient in the hospital you would be told that because of GDPR such information cannot be given. If you come back 15 minutes later and ask what ward or room J Bloggs is in you will be given the information. If he or she is not in the hospital you will simply be told that there is no one by that name a patient in the hospital.

Earlier this year I was in hospital, where I received excellent treatment. I spent one night in a double room, where I could hear every word that was said to the man in the other bed and that included every word his consultant said to him. And all that happened after I had received a sheet of paper about the importance of GDPR

This happens in all multi-bed hospital wards. 

I know a world-wide organisation in Ireland that does not print individual material on its members in its in-house annual publication. They claim that GDPR prevents the publication of such material. The same organisation in Germany prints the individual material of its members. No question of infringing on GDPR. 

And then there is the world of harvesting material on individuals. Isn’t that what gives the oxygen to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, now X, Instagram et al. At times it appears that there are people and organisations out there that know more about ourselves than we do.

The State knows so much about us and then when the individual wants the simplest and the most non-threatening information she or he is told that GDPR prevents the issuing of such material.

A fuzzy understanding of GDPR can lead to all sorts of misunderstanding and tempt people to go down the road of conspiracy theories. It can easily add fire to the current unstable world.