How Europe's Digital Omnibus Could Gut Privacy Protections
A “move fast and break things” mindset is entering EU digital regulation.
For years, Big Tech companies have followed a simple idea: “move fast and break things.” Build quickly, fix problems later. This can sometimes work in software development, but it becomes dangerous when applied to people’s rights.
Today, personal data, often very sensitive, flows across many systems and is used to make decisions about jobs, credit, or access to services. When something goes wrong, the damage may already be done and hard to undo.
This is why the European Union created rules designed to prevent harm before it happens. Laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the ePrivacy rules, and the Artificial Intelligence Act require companies to build safeguards into their systems from the start. These rules focus on transparency, accountability, and risk management because fixing harm afterward is often impossible.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance