Privacy Please
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Privacy Please
S6, E230 - A Tiny Fine with a Big Lesson
As 2025 kicks off, we explore the irony of the EU Commission fining itself for breaching its own data privacy regulations. The episode delves into the absurdity of minor fines, enforcement challenges, and the need for accountability in privacy governance.
• Introduction to the state of the world in 2025
• Discussion of California’s wildfires and broader global issues
• Examination of the EU’s self-imposed fine for data privacy violations
• Analysis of the significance of a $412 fine
• Importance of enforcement over mere fines
• Teaser for upcoming discussions on legislation and privacy in 2025
All righty, then. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Privacy, please. 2025, the new year. Gabe Gumbs, cameron Ivey, we're here. What's up, man? What's going?
Speaker 2:on Welcome to 2025. Welcome everybody. Welcome everybody. Hopefully the year started out well. So far it's been a crazy one already. Fires are burning, all kinds of crazy in the world yeah, anybody that's listening, that's in california everyone hope your friends and family are safe.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:The eu commission's getting fined for violating its own rules. That's how we're going to start 25, the world's burning, and the eu commission is itself violating its own rules.
Speaker 1:It's quite humor, humoring humor.
Speaker 2:It is. I think we could probably poke a little fun at this one. We'll start out the year on a light note, so why don't you get me spun up a little bit more on this? You were actually reading me in on this earlier today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if anybody hasn't heard of this, the court ordered European Commission to pay a fine for violating the EU's own data privacy rules, which is I mean, that in itself is kind of entertaining.
Speaker 2:I did not have that on my 2025 bingo card. I had lots of things on my 2025 bingo card. In fact, I had the world burning on my 2025 bingo, but, to be fair, I've had that on my bingo card every year since birth. This one, though, I did not have now. The fine is small.
Speaker 1:It's fairly small, yeah okay, that's funny, but that just made me think of something even funnier. Did you? Did you? What? Do you know? The saying cold as hell? I'm familiar. Did you know that it's not cold as hell, it's cold as hail? And it's not, it's not given a twang to it, it's literally like a hailstorm. Yeah, because being cold as hell is contradiction, contradictory of itself. Cold as hail because hail is ice. Cold as hail. That is another 2025 thing that I've learned.
Speaker 2:Well, so so someone just misquoted someone with a heavy southern accent exactly, it's cold as hell it's cold as hell out here.
Speaker 2:Well, it'll be a cold day in hell before you can use facebook and not get your privacy rights violated, because that's what happened here, right? So? So this court case was brought by a German citizen who signed up for a webinar or some kind of event, and the sign up used one of those, you know. Sign up with your social account yeah, it was a conference Conference. Sign up for a conference, you know. Sign up with your social account yeah, it was a conference. And to its parent company, and to no so, and to and I think Amazon also got it too, because the platform sits on it right Like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a IP address browser, Amazon, and then the website host and Meta Facebook's parent company. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So there you have it, the first.
Speaker 1:But like, let's tell them the funniest part, because, man, they better not do it again because they'd be out 412 cash usd.
Speaker 2:Oh no, oh, no run oh no, I appreciate that in principle they they held to their principles. They said, no, naughty, not supposed to do that. Here's's a fine. Now you know the $412, I have a suspicion that that's not a lot to stop a lot of organizations from running afoul of the rules. But something tells me the EU Commission themselves shall clean up their own act. At least they'd be unable to look at others straight in the eye and tell them that they've got to clean up theirs right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it is interesting because, I mean, I kind of understand it. It's not very, it's not like a big issue, but it's kind of nice that they actually did something about it.
Speaker 2:Right. It's nice that they acknowledge their own shortcomings. And you can't go telling everyone else that they've you know. You can't go around policing everyone else and tell them they have to adhere to these rules and then you yourself not hold yourself to that standard, right? So it is good to see that the EU Commission is holding itself to that standard. I can only hope that that means that we can see more fines coming, and I'm not rooting for fines so much as I'm rooting for enforcement. Just to be clear, I'm rooting for enforcement more than I'm rooting for fines. But if it takes fines to get enforcement, then fine, so be it. Pun intended, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this apparently was the first of its kind and this was back in 2022 when he actually Signed up, so it took a little while, but, like you said, I think more might pop up. This might be the first.
Speaker 2:This would be interesting. Well, I know this, as more of those pop up this year. You know who's going to be covering it. We're going to be.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to say Meta.
Speaker 2:He'll be at the root of it.
Speaker 1:We definitely gonna be.
Speaker 2:I thought you were gonna say meta. They'll be at the root of it. We definitely will be covering. We'll definitely be covering it. We'll be covering it. We'll be covering so much more. This year. We got some uh, we got some new live guests coming up. We've got a whole lot more coverage. You're gonna see us in some more social platforms, meta not being one of them yeah, a lot of exciting things, like we talked about.
Speaker 1:At the end of the year Also, you're going to be seeing some physical changes and some exciting things, so we're excited about it.
Speaker 2:It's going to be good. It's going to be great. What else is going on in the privacy and security world that we should mention? I think that's a good place to kick off the new year on a light note. I think so too.
Speaker 1:We're going to have next week. We're going to have on Dave Barmore, which he works at Runway Strategies, so he's a regulatory expert, so we're going to have a nice talk with him. We'll maybe even talk a little bit about the 20th January 20th inauguration and what that could mean for privacy and security in terms of changes that may be coming in the new office Topic.
Speaker 2:Great topic. There are a lot of folks that offline have asked me similar questions about what expectations they might be able to set administratively in terms of legislation that will make it not make it things, how it will impact, how even enforcement will be handled. So looking forward to that conversation next week for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Got some other ones exciting coming up and just really excited for the year, so I can't think of anything else that is top of mind right now. This is obviously just a short little episode, but Just a teaser 2024, 2025 teaser 2025 teaser yeah, yeah. We're going to have a new look. We're going to have a lot, a lot of good things coming, so yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be excellent.
Speaker 2:Keep, stay tuned, Stay, stay alert. So we're coming at you. Cam Ivy, Gabe Gumbs privacy please.
Speaker 1:Appreciate it.
