Could the European privacy policy hit the Tech sector?

Today the Nasdaq Index fell and many US tech giants are panic about the new privacy policy in Europe. European countries have been aware of the issue of privacy since the Edward Snowden scandal. Moreover, the latest US presidential election has also raised people’s concern about the control of information by tech giants. Facebook’s CEO was asked to attend several hearings about information usage in the US as well as Europe after the US election. Europe asks tech companies to base data centres storing European data  in Europe, and many tech companies have followed the new policy and opened their data centres in Europe already.

The data usage has been the key to many tech companies’ success. Tech companies have used the data collected from their users to create additional profits through providing precisely tageting advertise for other companies from other industries. In addition, having their users’ information help them to develop their future products as well as services. Currently, people have been less aware of their personal information, since giving personal information to tech companies is almost unavoidable; tech companies have hired law firms to help them get around the privacy policy and these companies’ users have to tick the box to agree tedious and tiringly long contracts to continue to use these companies’ services and in many cases people cannot avoid using these companies’ services. Here is why people ask governments to do more about this privacy issue. However, standing at the government’s point of view, having such scale of data collection is not a bad thing.

Big government or small government is a choice of people but not the government. The interest of government is always to grow bigger and more influential. Having access to these companies’ databases can help governments to become more influential and powerful, they may ask for accesses to tech companies’ data but do not really want to restrict their power of collecting their users’ data voluntarily.

Europe seems to be hostile against the US tech giants over the issue of privacy; however, I think that the biggest issue is not about privacy but about the nationalities of these firms. The new privacy policy might be an action taken by European countries to counter the US trade tariffs on American tech sector.