Overview[]
The International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy held its inaugural meeting in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2018. It is made up of politicians from Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Ireland, Latvia and Singapore. In 2019, the committee members were joined by representatives from Estonia, Ecuador, Mexico, Morocco, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The grand committee has already agreed to five principles, set out in a declaration signed last November:
- The internet is global, and law relating to it must derive from globally agreed principles.
- The deliberate spreading of disinformation and division is a credible threat to the continuation and growth of democracy and a civilizing global dialogue.
- Global technology firms must recognize their great power and demonstrate their readiness to accept their great responsibility as holders of influence.
- Social media companies should be held liable if they fail to comply with a judicial, statutory or regulatory order to remove harmful and misleading content from their platforms, and should be regulated to ensure they comply with this requirement.
- Technology companies must demonstrate their accountability to users by making themselves fully answerable to national legislatures and other organs of representative democracy.