The room built in is to ensure that there is some flexibility regarding for instance financial and health information where those restrictions would probably kick in sooner versus some e-commerce company such as a web store where the need to keep the data around on live systems is much less urgent.
That way one law will allow banks, insurance companies, hospitals and a mid-sized e-commerce company all to figure out for themselves what their comfort zone is, add a little room for safety and you're most likely going to be good, and even if not you can point at the law and say 'it wasn't explicit', so unless you are purposefully mis-interpreting a few million records as 'small scale' you will likely get away with that. Note the 'likely', this isn't a certainty but in my experience to date everybody that is fear mongering about the GDPR is coming up with the wildest of scenarios rather than to just look at the law as if it was intended well (which I really believe it is).
> Note the 'likely', this isn't a certainty but in my experience to date everybody that is fear mongering about the GDPR is coming up with the wildest of scenarios rather than to just look at the law as if it was intended well (which I really believe it is).
Bringing up the "parade of horribles" is a standard way of reacting to regulations, and it's normally countered by the regulators just pointing out that the horribles rely on really tortured interpretations that aren't intended. With the GDPR, that hasn't been the response (which has instead been a double-down on "it's just common sense" without confirming or refuting what will happen)--for me, that's some cause for concern.
I've rarely seen so much positive effect from a law before the date at which it would be enforced. My inbox is regularly visited by companies that suddenly feel that maybe they should obtain my content to spam me further in spite of me trying - sometimes for years - to get off their lists.
We'll see what happens after may 25th but for now I'm really hopeful that we will finally see some counterbalance to all this ridiculous profile building for marketing purposes.
That way one law will allow banks, insurance companies, hospitals and a mid-sized e-commerce company all to figure out for themselves what their comfort zone is, add a little room for safety and you're most likely going to be good, and even if not you can point at the law and say 'it wasn't explicit', so unless you are purposefully mis-interpreting a few million records as 'small scale' you will likely get away with that. Note the 'likely', this isn't a certainty but in my experience to date everybody that is fear mongering about the GDPR is coming up with the wildest of scenarios rather than to just look at the law as if it was intended well (which I really believe it is).