How to Handle Data Privacy

<p>Welcome back to another episode of Liberty Revealed, the show dedicated to revealing personal liberty to all who listen. I am your host, Mike Mahony, and today I want to talk to you about data privacy and how I feel it should be dealt with.</p><p>Protecting internet data privacy without hindering innovation requires a dose of legislative humility and strong trust in consumer intelligence. Neither is easy for a Libertarian to swallow.</p><p>The recent data breaches at Google and Facebook have amplified the debate around data privacy and the laws governing the same. Commentators seem to feel the US regulatory approach to all of this is akin to the Wild Wild West. They act as though no regulation exists.</p><p>Some are calling for the adoption of heavy-handed, European-style controls such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposes 45 specific rules on data-driven enterprises. They have applauded new data regulation rules in California, which grants sweeping power to the state’s attorney general to collect fees, impose rules, approve business plans, and solicit public support for class actions against internet companies. It is reasonable to be skeptical of the notion that increasing government power is the key to protecting privacy, but without federal preemption, the nation could balkanize with 50 sets of online privacy rules, undermining the seamless digital experience consumers enjoy today as well as the internet economy which powers some 10 percent of national gross domestic product.</p><p>I, for one, feel the regulatory approach to data privacy and protection of the internet is just flat out wrong.</p><p>One reason people believe the US has an inferior, laissez-faire approach to internet regulation is that they confuse data privacy and protection and because they are not familiar with America’s own substantive privacy protections developed since its founding. In fact, there are literally hundreds of laws on privacy and data protection in the U.S.—including common law torts, criminal laws,