Freedom House information, the government adopted a new data protection law in May 2021. The law, one of the most robust of its kind in Latin America, creates a new data protection agency, regulates cross-border transfers, and requires companies to provide users with the ability to access, amend, or delete their information. Although it strongly resembles the GDPR, the Ecuadorean law prescribes significantly lower fines for noncompliance compared with the EU regulation. Several governments over the past year also investigated or fined companies for their misuse of data. In December 2020, France’s data protection agency fined Google €100 million ($120 million) and Amazon €35 million ($41.9 million) for breaching the country’s French Data Protection Act. Italy’s data protection authority fined the telecom provider Wind €17 million ($20.3 million) for unlawful data processing and the provider Iliad €800,000 ($958,000) for violating the GDPR in July 2020. Fostering competition to improve digital rights In at least 21 countries over the past year, authorities proposed action against companies to defend competition in the digital market. Governments around the world recognized that market forces, when left unchecked, pose a threat to users’ rights. Regulators are employing competition policy as a tool to prevent abuse of user data, strengthen the information space, and empower users with greater choice. Governments around the world recognized that market forces, when left unchecked, pose a threat to users’ rights. Like anticorruption campaigns, however, competition policy may also be wielded in a politically motivated manner. As more governments build their capacity to regulate digital markets, it is vital that they adhere to good governance and human rights principles regarding necessity, proportionality, and transparency in order to ensure that both state and corporate power remain accountable to the public. Democracies ramp up scrutiny of business practices The proposed Digital Markets Act, unveiled by the EU in December 2020, is a sweeping effort to set clear, consistent, and rights-respecting rules. The draft legislation reclassifies certain service providers as “gatekeepers.” Such companies are prohibited from ranking their own products ahead of competitors and preinstalling their own apps on devices. The bill also provides users with the ability to transfer their data across services, a feature known as data portability. A New York train passenger reads a newspaper reporting on big tech company executives testifying to a congressional committee investigating monopoly policies. Image credit: Robert Nickelsberg via Getty Images @freedomhouse freedomhouse.org 19