Wired

[Commentary]  The headlines about the trade wars being touched off by President Donald Trump’s new tariffs may telegraph plenty of bombast and shots fired, but the most consequential war being waged today is a quieter sort of conflict: It’s the new Cold War over data protection. While the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica crisis currently burns as the latest, hottest flare-up in this simmering conflict, tensions may increase even more on May 25, 2018, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect. Combatants in the new Cold War are fighting over the currency of t

Opponents fear that the Stop Enabling Online Sex Trafficking Act messes with a key ground rule that has allowed the internet to flourish. “Section 230 we’ve been saying for a long time is responsible for creating the modern internet that we know and love—not to say that the current Internet doesn’t have problems,” says India McKinney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

What would it look like if Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission better tools to address online privacy? The most recent high-profile model comes from the European Union, where General Data Protection Regulation becomes the law of the land on May 25. GDPR focuses on ensuring that people who use online services know not only exactly what data those companies will take, but how they put it to use. One danger of an overly prescribed law is that technological solutions can outpace those mandates.