>Concerning the democratic aspect of participating in the online world I think GDPR actually helps, as before it was not possible to reliably get your own data deleted, rectified or transferred, which is not very democratic either IMHO
This is where the GDPR has really helped me. I posted a comment on a blog critical of a government data sharing initiative. Nothing illegal, or questionable - it was a simple two sentence opinion comment which I posted under my real name. I didn't stop to think for a minute that it would cause me any problems.
It did. I discovered that I couldn't get to work on any government projects because when a background check was carried out on me, the above comment was found and according to Revenue (the gov agency responsible for such checks) it indicated that I was hostile to the governments IT plans.
I asked the blog owner (same country as me) to please remove the comment, they refused. So I submitted a right to be forgotten request to Google to stop the blog post appearing in searches for my name.
Ireland? In Ireland, civil servants are not allowed to express political affiliation or opinion, so rather than it being a case of "we don't like what you said", it would be a case of "you said something political, and it persists."
I'm not sure if the contract for Revenue is exactly the same as the civil service, but I would presume on this front it is very similar.
There have been three occasions where the IT contracting firm I was working for sent me to work on government IT projects as a contractor. None of them were for Revenue, but it is Revenue who do these checks for all other departments. On one occasion my employer managed to pull a few strings to get me on the project (DSP), on the other two I was told no government work for me (HSE and DoT).
On one of the three three occasions I was forwarded an email from Revenue that said "he expresses a desire for personal privacy that indicates he would be unwilling to fully embrace the governments data sharing strategy".
I did write to a few news outlets about this, none were interested. Even the ICCL wasn't interested, which really surprised me.
> I discovered that I couldn't get to work on any government projects because when a background check was carried out on me, the above comment was found
This is where the GDPR has really helped me. I posted a comment on a blog critical of a government data sharing initiative. Nothing illegal, or questionable - it was a simple two sentence opinion comment which I posted under my real name. I didn't stop to think for a minute that it would cause me any problems.
It did. I discovered that I couldn't get to work on any government projects because when a background check was carried out on me, the above comment was found and according to Revenue (the gov agency responsible for such checks) it indicated that I was hostile to the governments IT plans.
I asked the blog owner (same country as me) to please remove the comment, they refused. So I submitted a right to be forgotten request to Google to stop the blog post appearing in searches for my name.