This Wednesday, November 19th, the European Commission will publish its Digital Omnibus proposal following an intransparent and undemocratic process. Leaked documents reveal it would be “the biggest rollback of digital fundamental rights in EU history.”
This Digital Omnibus is part of a broader EU deregulation campaign breaking down protections under the guise of ‘stimulating innovation’ and ‘competition’ following the Draghi report. At the same time, the EU is intensifying the surveillance and oppression of migrants and expanding the surveillance powers of Europol.
EDRi and 127 civil society organisations and unions published an open letter urging the European Commission to immediately halt any attempts to reopen the GDPR, the ePrivacy directive, the AI Act, or other core digital rights protections. The open letter warns that under the guise of “technical streamlining,” the Omnibus would:
- Weaken protections against constant tracking of people’s devices, making it easier for those in power to control phones, cars or smart homes
- Remove guardrails from the AI Act designed to ensure AI is developed safely and without discrimination, while delaying penalties for dangerous AI systems
- Allow AI developers to secretly exempt themselves from all obligations, preventing the public and authorities from knowing about high-risk systems
- Hollow out the GDPR by allowing companies to “mark their own homework”
Although this cave-in to corporate and state violence impacts everyone, it can especially harm racialised people. The GDPR and AI Act, though imperfect, provide essential protections against grave human rights violations. They restrict how companies and governments can collect and use sensitive data, including ethnicity, religion, and other characteristics that affect racialised communities. Without these safeguards, corporations and state actors will have far more freedom to deploy harmful AI systems that disproportionately harm racialised populations—from predictive policing algorithms, to AI-powered border control systems, to automated decision-making that denies people access to housing, benefits, or employment.
This Wednesday, the Omnibus will be published officially. Keep an eye on organisations such as EDRi for updates.
See: EDRi civil society open letter ‘Forthcoming Digital Omnibus would mark point of no return’ at EDRi.
Image via EDRi.