Will Cutting Red Tape Entangle Us In More Red Tape?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) epitomises what is best and worst about the EU. On the good side it prioritised protecting the privacy of the individual from criminal invasion and unscrupulous corporate overreach. On the bad side it resulted in an unwieldy, labyrinthine piece of documentation ten times as long as it needed to me which gave every qualifying organisation it a major headache when it had to implement it. Village scout troops and amateur orchestras suddenly found themselves having to jump through nearly the same regulatory hoops as Facebook, Barclays Bank and the NHS, seeking informed consent from and sending lengthy privacy policies and data transfer agreements to bemused members who neither knew nor cared what all the fuss was about. What's more, the principles of oversight and transparency underpinning GDPR are rapidly being left behind by the exponential increase in the scale, sophistication and scope of data processing made possible by