Sample Solution

year birthday, enforcement appears to be ramping up significantly. Fines have been levied against both large and small businesses, directly contradicting the assurances made by the politicians who spearheaded the GDPR movement. While France’s January 2019 fine against Google for €50,000,000 comports with Albrecht’s assertions, many recent fines do not. In October 2018, a small Austrian business was fined €4,800 because its security camera captured too much public space. Additionally, the French DPA’s rulings against two startups, Teemo and Fidzup, for data protection violations illustrates that the French DPA also has no problem prosecuting startups, a rebuke of the German policymaker’s assurance that enforcement would focus on the big players. Selective enforcement of the GDPR over the last year has created a perfect mechanism for abuse of power to occur. If European government officials continue to keep the public in the dark as to their enforcement criteria, they are creating an environment of chaos; an environment where businesses operate in fear. Selective enforcement should not be accepted as a simple solution to a poorly structured or unnecessary regulation.

B. Undue Empowerment of Litigants

In the United States, standing is a jurisdictional prerequisite, and so a federal court will be quick to dismiss a claim for lack of standing if the plaintiff is unable to show injury from an alleged privacy violation. For a plaintiff to have standing, he or she must show “(1) [he or she has] suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” Privacy plaintiffs often run afoul of the standing test in that without monetary damages arising from their privacy violations, they are unable to demonstrate they have suffered “injury in fact” that is “concrete and particularized”