Sample Solution

The American conception of privacy is predicated on ensuring the individual’s freedom from government intrusion and pushing back the growth of the administrative state. The framers’ distaste for excessive government power to invade the privacy of the people was forged into the Bill of Rights in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. These amendments responded to the egregious British abuses of personal privacy; including the quartering of soldiers in private homes, the search and seizure of colonists’ property, and forcing colonists to divulge information. Some of the first laws in the new republic constrained the government’s use of the census and its ability to compel information in court. The 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ensured that people could access records held by the government. Given this history of pushing back against government intrusion, it is reasonable to be skeptical that increasing government power is now the key to privacy in the U.S.

B. GDPR-type Policy in the EU Has Failed to Increase Consumer Trust

The argument for adopting GDPR-like legislation in the U.S. would be made stronger if Europe’s laws to date successfully increased trust among consumers in the digital ecosystem. Unfortunately, reports and surveys indicate no such evidence. The biannual Eurobarometer survey, which interviews 100 individuals from each EU country on a variety of topics, has been tracking European trust in the Internet since 2009. Interestingly, European trust in the Internet remained flat from 2009 through 2017, despite the European Union strengthening its regulations in 2009 (implementation of which occurred over the subsequent few years) and significantly changing its privacy rules, such as the court decision that established the right to be forgotten in 2014. The evidence suggests that Europe’s data protection regulations to date have little to no pos