German
Chancellor Angel Merkel wants to ease the country’s “restrictive”
data protection laws to allow internet companies to collect more
users’ personal data.
“A
principle of the data closeness, which we were guided by for many
years, cannot be today used as a guiding idea for the development of
the new products,” Merkel said during an IT conference in the
German western city of Saarbruecken on Thursday, adding that this
principle has already been pushed to the limit.
According
to German media, Germany’s data protection regulations have been
long based on two principles dubbed “data economy” and “avoidance
of revealing data.” Both concepts stipulate that internet companies
should only collect and store a minimum of the users’ personal data
and use then only if required.
Now,
Merkel demands a paradigm shift in Germany’s approach to data
protection by saying that it concerns not only “prevention of
excesses” in data use but also creation of “free space” for
companies that facilitates the development of new digital products.
The
Chancellor also warned that a newly issued European Union Data
Protection Regulation that came into effect in May should not be
interpreted and applied “too restrictively” at a national level,
adding that could otherwise make “big data management impossible.”
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