2018: The Year Ahead for the GDPR and the new Data Protection Act

January

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) introduces two new innovations to its website;

• a handy calculator that allows firms to calculate what 4% of their global turnover is, in multiple currencies
• a guide to what to expect when an ICO inspection team arrives (apparently they travel in unmarked people carriers equipped with privacy glass, wear ‘FBI-style’ logo’d blouson jackets and typically greet their subjects by saying “We’re from Wilmslow; you may be expecting us”)

Commented the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, “we’ve done research and it’s what people most want from us. And it’s less hassle to do than all that Guidance stuff”

February

On the basis of an analysis of expert opinion gathered from over 2,000 articles on LinkedIn, the International Monetary Fund calculates that probable fines under the GDPR are likely to top $27,480bn in 2018/19. Christine Lagarde convenes a press conference, explaining that a severe global depression was thus inevitable and that Tim Turner probably had some explaining to do.

March

As the UK approaches its first General Election of 2018, a unanimous vote of both Houses of Parliament declares that electioneering will not be subject to the Data Protection Act. Commented a backbench MP “Every time there’s an election we do what the policy wonks tell us to do to make contact with our supporter base – or potential voters, at any rate. And then afterwards there’s a big fuss and fines and what have you. Frankly I came into politics to make the world a better place, not to try and work out all this data subject, processor, object malarkey!”

April

Someone claiming to be the Assistant Chief Cashier of the First National Bank of Nigeria launches a ‘Do you still want to hear from us?’ email re-permissioning campaign, targeting a select group of reputable UK and American bank account holders willing to receive $16m from accounts frozen by UN sanctions.

May

A secretive group of aged COBOL programmers release a rambling message online, explaining that all the tens of thousands of ‘countdown to the GDPR’ clocks in use on websites, counting the weeks, days, hours and minutes left until 25^th May 2018, are infected with Y2K-like malicious code. Revealing that the secret group (calling itself ‘Pseudonymous’) had made the countdown clocks freely available to users amidst cryptic comments about “…not hearing the last of us after all that overtime in 1999” the statement claimed that as a result all web-enabled systems would cease to function after midnight on 24^th May 2018.

Subsequent to an emergency UK government Cobra committee meeting on 23^rd May, a spokesman commented “Yes, it’s all true, it seems. A bit complicated, but it’s to do with APIs and all that. Anyway, it seems that our number’s up and it’s, you know, the end of civilisation as we know it”.

*Ends*

*and if this doesn’t all prove to be 100% accurate, then we’re not ICO-accredited GDPR experts!