‘GDPR will be ubiquitous and unsuccessful’

Opentext CEO Mark Barrenechea is asserting that the battle to maintain some reasonable chance of safeguarding our privacy online has been lost, due in part to advances in cyber crime, a lack of concern around submitting personal details online among Generation Z, and the sheer volume of available data.

Speaking to media and analysts on the sidelines of the firm’s Enterprise World Asia summit in Singapore,  Barrenechea said that the European GDPR privacy measure was at least an attempt to try to put in check the rights of an individual to be to be forgotten or opt out.

“But you can’t…  not participate on the Internet,” he said, adding “I think it’s generational as well; I think GDPR will be ubiquitous and unsuccessful.”

The OpenText CEO and CTO similarly was not hopeful that the California Privacy Law stood any chance of making inroads where personal online privacy is concerned.

“You know, technology moves,” Barrenechea said. “People keep volunteering their data. And as long as you’re volunteering your data, there’s going to be no regulation to keep privacy in check.”

“Generationally, people are uploading their Facebook data, and their DNA – I don’t think anything like GDPR can keep it in check.”

“We probably need a new technology, maybe it’s identity containers,” he mused. “Maybe the Internet or the World Wide Web needs a law [around] some notion of an identity container. ”

“A law isn’t going to protect it. It’s got to be some new technology; a new standard around identity containment,” said Barrenechea.

Richard van der Draay is in Singapore as a guest of OpenText