The Trump administration is ramping up attacks on the GDPR, saying it protects online scammers and fraudsters at a time of exploding cybercrime linked to the coronavirus pandemic. High-ranking U.S. officials expressed concerns about the GDPR's restrictive implications for public safety and law enforcement, as well as the issue of divergent interpretations of the law.

U.S. objections to the GDPR date back to the inception of the EU’s privacy law. Silicon Valley giants lobbied against the law that many U.S. players said was a tool designed to limit the power and wealth of Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook.
Criticism of the GDPR grew recently, as EU privacy watchdogs wrapped up their first major probes into U.S. companies and Google lost an appeal against a €50 million fine in France.
A highly-anticipated Court of Justice of the European Union ruling, due in mid-July, is likely to increase tensions. The CJEU will rule on the legality of data transfers from the EU to the U.S. If the court finds that the data transfers are not legal under Europe’s privacy laws, Washington will face pressure to beef up privacy protections to keep doing business with the EU.
The central point to the criticism of the GDPR is the WHOIS database, an important tool for global law enforcement agencies fighting cybercrime. Before the law came into effect in May 2018, they could issue a request via WHOIS to quickly identify the owner of a domain name.
After the law came into effect, however, concerns arose that compliance with such requests could violate the GDPR. In many cases the law enforcement officials had to ask a judge to validate requests, slowing down a previously simple and straightforward process.
Critics say that EU privacy authorities need to address the problem by creating an exception in the GDPR for law enforcement. Others have called for WHOIS to be replaced by a more privacy-friendly system that would provide the same functionality for cybercrime investigators.
However European law enforcement officials said that EU data protection authorities are refusing to clear up legal confusion about who could lawfully use such a system and under what conditions. EU privacy officials said it is up to legal authorities in member countries to respond to law enforcement requests to identify domain name owners, and that no change to the GDPR is planned.


Author: Nicholas Vinocur

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-administration-gdpr/