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‘Cambridgenalization’ in Politics? The Spanish Act 3/2018, December 5, Data Protection Regulation and the Future of Democracy

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Democracy and Globalization

Part of the book series: Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship ((EALELS,volume 10))

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Abstract

The Internet’s controversial nature accentuates the need to incorporate useful methods of analysis. Examining how the Internet’s core power structures are built and behave is a surprisingly complex endeavor. This paper explores the Spanish Act 3/2018, December 5, Data Protection Regulation and Digital Rights and an amendment, which allowed political parties to use personal data obtained from web pages and other digital open sources to carry out political activities in the electoral campaigns. Attorneys and NGOs denounced this regulation that helped political parties to profile citizens depending on their ideologies. Political parties could carry out practices like those of Cambridge Analytica—a former British-based data corporation accused of having collected the data of millions of Facebook users without their permission to hit floating voters in the US with pro-Trump adverts. Finally, the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled that such practices could lead to ideological profiling of citizens, which would undermine the very foundations of the Constitution and democracy. The decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court that unanimously declared contrary to the Constitution and void section 1 of art. 58 bis of the Election Law put a limit on politicians’ attempts to erode democracy. In this case, the rule of law was safeguarded and the individual rights saved. The fact is that the possibilities technology provides situate us within a web of knowingly-constructed power relationships which law cannot afford to ignore. The paper aims to analyze the Spanish act in order to lay bare the conceptual roots of the tension between democracy and globalization as well as the legal and political impact of the Internet. An honest debate regarding what exactly we expect out of the Internet has become of great urgency; we must submit the Internet to a real, participative, democratic process—something which has yet to occur. What do we stand to gain? And, perhaps more importantly, what do we stand to lose? Will limits also be imposed on private corporations in favor of basic rights? What is actually happening with democracy and human rights? These are questions that have very real repercussions for us all. When we devote too much of our time and attention to our screens, we may be losing sight of our immediate environment, thereby significantly hampering our ability to take advantage of the opportunities that arise.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mosco (2009), p. 3.

  2. 2.

    According to Merriam Webster, the Internet is “an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world—used with the except when being used attributively.”

  3. 3.

    Mosco outlines three processes which make up his political economy of communication: commodification, spatialization and structuration. Commodification is the process by which goods and services valued for their utility are transformed into merchandise. In the context of communication, this process has been expressed in terms of media, audience and work. Spatialization is the process by which time-space limitations are overcome in the social sphere. This process has been central to the growth of media communication companies and their expansion as large corporations. Structuration implies a relational vision of social class which reinforces both the idea of class as the chasm separating the haves and the have-nots, and the connections linking market and labor, for instance. This process also includes other notions like gender and ethnicity. Mosco proposes a critical, realistic, inclusive and constitutive epistemology. See Mosco (2009), pp. 11–18.

  4. 4.

    It is an act named ley orgánica (organic law) in Spanish. This kind of regulation needs absolute majority of the Congress of Deputies and includes laws that develop the fundamental rights and public liberties.

  5. 5.

    The Spanish Act 3/2018 amended the section 1, art. 58 bis Organic Law 5/1985, June 19.

  6. 6.

    Attorneys and civil society groups that campaign on issues like civil liberties in the Internet. See Hadzelek and Rodríguez (2014), pp. 26–39.

  7. 7.

    Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Elections, was fined £15,000 for failing to respond to an American citizen’s request for copies of information it holds on him (David Pegg, “Cambridge Analytica owner fined £15,000 for ignoring data request”, The Guardian, January 9, 2019).

  8. 8.

    Dyer-Witheford and Matviyenko (2019), p. 66.

  9. 9.

    Rodríguez and Martínez (2016), p. 12.

  10. 10.

    Rodríguez and Martínez’s book provides a model for understanding how struggles for the control of knowledge actually take place on the Web. It also proposes a theory based upon a conceptual model structured around the implications of netpower (category which highlights the battles for domination of the social imaginary through the control of content, technology and access to new media) in this specific context. The book attempts to shed some light on this topic by way of two opposing ideal models for Internet configuration, constructed in line with Max Weber’s ideal types. Both models are abstract, not localized contexts, designed to describe conceptual theoretical frameworks. They are especially effective for examining the tensions, trends and processes at work throughout the Web, thereby allowing for a better understanding of how power is produced, accessed and distributed in a very specific socio-historic context. These ideal types are called Dictanet (DN) and Free(share)net (FN). The book examines Dictanet (DN) and Free(share)net (FN) as analytical categories and dig deeper into their restrictions and developments. DN is more of a process than an established reality. It is a cluster of tendencies which limit, reduce and demolish efforts to build common spaces for democratic, cooperative sharing and exchange in the Internet. DN and FN allow us to embark upon a more scientifically sound analysis of the myriad challenges and problems the Internet poses. See Rodríguez and Martínez (2016), pp. 5–16. See Rodríguez Prieto (2012).

  11. 11.

    Arblaster (2002), pp. 26–35.

  12. 12.

    Farivar (2018), p. xvii.

  13. 13.

    Ross (2019).

  14. 14.

    Rob Price, “Facebook says it ‘unintentionally uploaded’ 1.5 million people’s email contacts without their consent,” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uploaded-1-5-million-users-email-contacts-without-permission-2019-4?IR=T, accessed May 21, 2020.

  15. 15.

    It is curious that one of the current political science best sellers—Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018)- ignores the influence of technological big corporation on democracies. The authors mention the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. However, they don’t mention the role of nationalization of United States copper companies in the coup. See Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), pp. 114–117.

  16. 16.

    “Apple Inc. v. Pepper et al. No. 17-204 587 U. S. (2019)”, US Supreme Court, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-204_bq7d.pdf, accessed May 21, 2020.

  17. 17.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that under the test of the US Supreme Court case Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 (1977), consumers were affected by Apple’s fee and were not secondary purchasers. Consumers could therefore sue Apple directly. The Court affirmed that Apple’s interpretation of Illinois Brick did not make a lot of sense, and only served to “contradict the longstanding goal of effective private enforcement and consumer protection in antitrust cases”.

  18. 18.

    ‘Illinois brick’ affirms that only the first or direct purchaser, rather than subsequent or indirect purchasers, may recover damages from an antitrust violator, Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 (1977). See Barbara T. Sicalides, “Illinois Brick Simplified: U.S. Supreme Court Rules That Purchasers From iPhone App Store Can Sue Apple Despite the Fact That Apple Does Not Set App Prices,” https://www.pepperlaw.com/publications/illinois-brick-simplified-us-supreme-court-rules-that-purchasers-from-iphone-app-store-can-sue-apple-despite-the-fact-that-apple-does-not-set-app-prices-2019-05-17/, accessed May 20, 2020.

  19. 19.

    A couple of weeks later, Apple, in a section of its Guidelines titled ‘Principles and Practices,’ defended its practices, saying developers decide what they want to charge from a set of price tiers.” Apple also said that they “only collect a commission from developers when a digital good or service is delivered through an app”. See App Store Review Guidelines, https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/, accessed May 21, 2020.

  20. 20.

    Among these, the impact of the hi-tech giants and governments on basic and fundamental rights plays a prominent role. According to McChesney (2008, p. 424), “if we want the Internet to spawn a new generation of viable media content providers, we cannot look to the market to produce that outcome. It will require explicit policies to generate such an outcome”.

  21. 21.

    Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/3e485e15-11bd-11e6-ba9a-01aa75ed71a1/, accessed May 21, 2020.

  22. 22.

    Plataforma en defensa de la libertad de información, “El recurso del Defensor del Pueblo contra la Ley de Protección de Datos confirma el atropello que representa esta norma para los derechos fundamentales”, http://libertadinformacion.cc/el-recurso-del-defensor-del-pueblo-contra-la-nueva-ley-de-proteccion-de-datos-confirma-el-atropello-que-representa-esta-norma-para-los-derechos-fundamentales/, accessed May 21, 2020. See Rodríguez Prieto (2019), pp. 31–37.

  23. 23.

    Farivar (2018), p. xvi.

  24. 24.

    According to Howard (2015, p. 4), the Internet of things will be defined by communication between devices more than between people—a larger and ubiquitous Internet.

  25. 25.

    Hindman (2018).

  26. 26.

    Julia Carrie Wong, “Elon Musk joins #DeleteFacebook effort as Tesla and SpaceX pages vanish”, The Guardian, March 23, 2018.

  27. 27.

    Art. 58 bis of the Election Law (LOREG), Ley Orgánica 5/1985, de 19 de Junio, del régimen electoral general.

  28. 28.

    “In the event that such data is stored in a database of ideological profiles, the removal of said database” is expressly requested “because it is manifestly illegal.” See https://confilegal.com/20181207-expertos-en-privacidad-crean-un-formulario-para-que-los-partidos-no-creen-bases-de-datos-con-opiniones-de-los-ciudadanos/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=shareweb&utm_content=footer&utm_origin=footer, accessed May 21, 2020.

  29. 29.

    The Spanish Data Protection Authority (SDPA) is an independent public authority that supervises, through investigative and corrective powers, the application of the data protection law.

  30. 30.

    This interpretation is based on the deletion of the term “treatment” from amendment 331 initially submitted to Congress. This criterion followed by the Agency is also based on the suppression of section 2 of said amendment, which allowed the dissemination of electoral propaganda based on ideological profiles with certain guarantees (Data Protection Authority, November 21, 2018, https://www.aepd.es/es/prensa-y-comunicacion/notas-de-prensa/criterio-de-la-agencia-espanola-de-proteccion-de-datos-sobre, accessed June 21, 2020).

  31. 31.

    Plataforma en defensa de la libertad de información, http://libertadinformacion.cc/la-pdli-considera-escandaloso-el-acuerdo-de-todos-los-partidos-para-legalizar-el-spam-electoral-y-la-realizacion-de-perfiles-ideologicos/, accessed May 21, 2020.

  32. 32.

    See Defensor del Pueblo, https://www.defensordelpueblo.es/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Demanda_Recurso_2019.pdf, accessed June 21, 2020.

  33. 33.

    Data Protection Authority Memorandum N/REF: 210070/2018. https://www.aepd.es/es/documento/2018-0181.pdf, accessed May 21, 2020.

  34. 34.

    See Boletín Oficial del Estado, https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2019-3423, accessed June 21, 2020.

  35. 35.

    Idem.

  36. 36.

    The web page was https://www.listaviernes.es/ Robinson list is an opt-out list of people who do not want to receive marketing transmissions (email, sms, phone calls, etc). Spanish Robinson list was stablished in 1993.

  37. 37.

    This is the unconstitutional section: “1. Collection of personal data relating to the political opinions of people, carried out by political parties within the framework of their electoral activities, will be protected in the public interest only when adequate guarantees are provided.”

  38. 38.

    STC 76/2019, May 22, 2019-1405-2019, https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2019-9548, accessed May 21, 2020.

  39. 39.

    The Wall Street Journal reported that many apps on iOS send data back to Facebook, without notifying users, about very personal things. Such data flowing into Facebook can be very valuable for targeting ads (Sam Schechner and Mark Secada, “You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook”, The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2019), https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636?, accessed May 21, 2020.

  40. 40.

    See Dwyer (2014).

  41. 41.

    Similarly, the new norm is for health clubs to require users provide their fingerprint for entry control. Who guarantees that our private biometric data will not be sold—or worse yet, stolen?

  42. 42.

    According to Art. 6 of Spanish Civil Code, rights must be waived expressly—leaving no room for tacit interpretation. That means that most of Terms and Condition of Use of big technological corporations could clash with Spanish Civil Code. Contract law and digital Terms and Condition of Use based upon an agreement inter partes could contain invalid elements in the framework of Spanish legal system, in the sense that rights must be waived expressly.

  43. 43.

    Asymmetry (IA) exists when two or more parties in a contract/project have different types or amounts of information, and choose not to share or fail to understand information that is shared. See Sceral et al. (2018), pp. 127–134.

  44. 44.

    More information at https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/, accessed June 22, 2020.

  45. 45.

    STS 25/2005, January 27, 2005.

  46. 46.

    The 2011 PlayStation Network (PSN) outage affected Spaniard consumers (hackers claimed to have stolen PSN credit card info), but according to Terms and Condition of Use, Spaniards had to sue Sony in California.

  47. 47.

    Human Resource professionals use social network sites as a complement of their activities. Internet-based recruitment is a major trend for junior/middle management posts. See Holbeche (2004), p. 174. Canadian Prime Minister was in trouble because of some pictures taken when he was young. The huge amount of pictures in social networks could harm/embarrass new candidates in the following years.

  48. 48.

    Ellen Meiksins Wood considers the parcelization of sovereignty as a key feature of European feudalism. “The fragmentation of the state, the fact that feudal relations were at once a method of governing and a mode of exploitation, also meant that many free farmers now became subject with their properties to private masters, forfeiting surplus labour in exchange for personal protection, in a relationship of dependence that was both political and economic”. See Meiksins Wood (1995), p. 39. Local arrangements taking a variety of forms, including contractual relations between lords and kings and lords and vassals, came to supplement regional administration. Arbitration replaced the rule of law. See Jodi Den, “Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?”, Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism-the-end-of-capitalism/, accessed May 22, 2020. In this article, Den mentions Jaron Lanier’s concept of ‘masses of digital peasants’, provides creative contents to the “lords of the clouds” like Google and YouTube in the framework of those abusive contracts named Terms and Condition of Use. See Lanier (2011). Lanier considers thousands of online volunteers collectively will contribute to the fortunes of those few who have been able to position themselves as “lords of the computing clouds”.

  49. 49.

    According to Schoen (2017), there is a broad consensus among intelligence officials that Russian hackers were very active in the US Presidential Election, Brexit and political processes and movements around Europe.

  50. 50.

    Galloway (2017), p. 7.

  51. 51.

    The thesis of the structural dependence of state on capital maintains that because owners of capital control investment decisions that have broad effects on the health of the economy, there are limitations on the reforms that can be developed by elected governments. See Robert Clark (2005), p. 170.

  52. 52.

    See Global Justice Now, 2018, https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2018/oct/17/69-richest-100-entities-planet-are-corporations-not-governments-figures-show, accessed June 23, 2020.

  53. 53.

    Vecchi (2017), pp. 57–58.

  54. 54.

    Torres (2010).

  55. 55.

    After 2008, Spanish workers lost 30,000 million Euros, meanwhile corporate benefits increased by 14,000 million Euros. See Javier Jorrin, “Las rentas del capital ganan peso en el PIB y crecen ya casi el doble que los salarios”, El Confidencial, https://www.elconfidencial.com/economia/2017-05-26/salarios-pib-rentas-capital-beneficios-empresariales-desigualdad_1388916/, accessed May 21, 2020.

  56. 56.

    “Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google engaged in anti-competitive, monopoly-style tactics to evolve into four of the world’s most powerful corporate behemoths, according to congressional investigators”, Tony Romm, et al., “House investigation faults Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google for engaging in anti-competitive monopoly tactics”, The Washington Post, October 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/06/amazon-apple-facebook-google-congress/, accessed October 10, 2020.

  57. 57.

    Rifkin (2000), p. 11.

  58. 58.

    Big technological companies insist upon the freedom to launch every practice while asserting the necessity of their freedom from law and regulation. See Zuboff (2019), pp. 497–498.

  59. 59.

    Social techno-Darwinism means that the big uploaders should see their wealth and power increase while the downloaders—most of people—should see their wealth and power decrease. Governments should not interfere in the survival of the fittest in the framework of an extreme commodification of the Internet. See Rodríguez Prieto (2017).

  60. 60.

    According to McChesney, the corporate system limits the technology to what best serves its purposes. It is necessary to build a more democratic society—online and offline—and extend self-government to the economy (but how? This seems to be a huge question, which cannot be just hinted at in this manner. I suggest that either you develop this theme further, or you limit yourself to referring to McChesney, omitting this remark). See McChesney (2013), pp. 228–232.

  61. 61.

    Mosco (2014), p. 138.

  62. 62.

    Michael Ovelgonne et al. (2019), p. 12.

  63. 63.

    See Rodríguez and Martínez (2016), p. 16.

  64. 64.

    Chris Hughes, “It’s time to break up Facebook”, The New York Times, May 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html, access May 20, 2020.

  65. 65.

    There are checks and balances in democracies, which affect governments. Big technological corporations, by contrast, have assumed a critical role in our societies without direct democratic control.

  66. 66.

    McChesney (2013), p. 142.

  67. 67.

    Glenn Greenwald, “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily”, The Guardian, June 6, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order, accessed June 22, 2020.

  68. 68.

    Scott Neuman, “Report: Microsoft Helped NSA, FBI Get Around Encryption”, NPR, July 11, 2013, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/11/201192986/report-microsoft-helped-nsa-fbi-get-around-encryption?t=1589988453741, accessed June 25, 2020.

  69. 69.

    Glenn Greenwald, “Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages”, The Guardian, July 12, 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data, accessed June 22, 2020.

  70. 70.

    Deibert (2013), pp. xi–xii.

  71. 71.

    Dutch Sandwich or new Irish BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) tools are taxation techniques, which allow tech giants to delay paying US taxes on international earnings for years, and pay a lower tax rate overseas. Corporations such as Aphabet, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon pay a lower tax rate in most of EU countries. According to Fair Tax Mark, these companies avoided to pay taxes by shifting revenues and profits through tax havens or low-tax countries. See Fair Tax Mark, “The Silicon Six and their $100 billion global tax gap”, Fair Tax Mark, December 2019, https://fairtaxmark.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Silicon-Six-Report-5-12-19.pdf, access May 22, 2020.

  72. 72.

    In April 2016, The European Commission sent a statement of objections to Google, alleging that it had breached EU competition law. Google was accused of placing onerous requirements on firms using Android and stifling competition. According to the European Commission, Google has about a 90% share in the markets for general Internet search services, licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system, which makes it dominant. See Kevin Rawlinson, “Google faces EU charge over Android ‘abuse of dominance”, BBC, April 20, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36092441, accessed June 22, 2020. In March 20, 2019, the European Commission fined Google €1.49 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. According to Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, “the Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate - and consumers the benefits of competition”. See European Commission, “Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising”, Press Release, March 20, 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770, accessed June 22, 2020.

  73. 73.

    Regulation in the EU has been insufficient so far. GDPR is an important step in the right direction, but taxation, massive surveillance and privacy rights keep giving a cause for concern. Let me make an example. The right to be forgotten or right to erasure is a centerpiece of GDPR. In September, 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google does not have to apply the right to be forgotten globally (Judgment in Case C-507/17Google LLC, successor in law to Google Inc. v Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés- Luxembourg, September 24, 2019). The corporation only needs to remove links from its search results in Europe—and not elsewhere—after receiving an appropriate request (https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-09/cp190112en.pdf). The consequence is clear: the right to be forgotten has remained a dead letter. Inside EU, users will be able to access to blocked information through a virtual private network (VPN).

  74. 74.

    Dyer-Witheford (2015).

  75. 75.

    Fuchs (2015), p. 39.

  76. 76.

    Hughes, “It’s time to break up Facebook”.

  77. 77.

    According to Ralph Miliband, the most important political fact about advanced capitalist societies is the continued existence in them of private and ever more concentrated economic power. “As a result of that power, the owners and controllers in whose hands it lies enjoy a massive preponderance in the political system”. Miliband (1969), p. 265.

  78. 78.

    See Harvey (2007), p. 22.

  79. 79.

    Lanier (2018), p. 22.

  80. 80.

    In 2009, Motorola chose to replace Google’s free localization services with Skyhook Wireless, because it was more reliable (Zuboff 2019, pp. 134–135). In 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility; the main intent of the purchase allegedly was to gain Motorola’s patent portfolio, in order to protect Android. See Jeff Roberts, “Google paid $4B for patents: why the Motorola deal worked out just fine”, Gigaom, https://gigaom.com/2014/01/30/google-paid-4b-for-patents-why-the-motorola-deal-worked-out-just-fine/ accessed June 25, 2020.

  81. 81.

    According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Washington Consensus was “a set of economic policy recommendations for developing countries, and Latin America in particular, that became popular during the 1980s. The term Washington Consensus usually refers to the level of agreement between the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and U.S. Department of the Treasury on those policy recommendations”.

  82. 82.

    Political economy of communication has examined growth by taking up different ways of corporate concentration. Both measures have been key to undermine antitrust regulation. Old public monopolies (telephone in Europe) were privatized or they were funded by public money in the US. According to McChesney, the justification for deregulation was that the traditional phone monopolies would be permitted to use their wires to compete with each other in local markets, but “they had sufficient monopoly power, commercial and political, that ensure that no new serious competitors emerged” (McChesney 2013, p. 110). The process of deregulation, in the case of big Internet corporations, was decisive to develop a concentrated market: “Economists and policy makers embraced the notion that ensuring competition via government oversight and regulation was unnecessary, even counterproductive” (Kenworthy 2018), p. 340.

  83. 83.

    Fining big corporations such Google or Apple for important infractions of antitrust law is not enough, if we consider they make huge amounts of money. We need a strict and ambitious regulation to preserve a real free market.

  84. 84.

    “Both France and Germany on Thursday (25 September) said the current financial crisis would leave important marks on the world economy, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy declaring that the under-regulated system we once knew is now finished”, Elitsa Vucheva, “‘Laissez-faire’ capitalism is finished, says France”, euobserver, September 26, 2008, https://euobserver.com/political/26814, accessed June 22, 2020.

  85. 85.

    Olalla (2015).

  86. 86.

    See Rodríguez Prieto (2019).

  87. 87.

    Courtwright (2019), p. 220.

  88. 88.

    Chester (2007), pp. 130–131.

  89. 89.

    The Internet has never been other than the fruit of common-good, cooperative efforts. Every day, millions of people cooperate with—and in many ways, work for—the content providers. As a result, the Internet giants make mammoth profits—known as net surplus. Net surplus is central to the present and future organization of the Web. As Internet commercialization processes grow stronger and stronger, net surplus has become a key arena in the battle for the Web. There are two modes of network surplus profits: those that come from the big data, especially on social networks, and those obtained thanks to the collaborative economy, see Rodríguez Prieto (2020).

  90. 90.

    Harvard Law Review, “Cooperation or Resistance?: The Role of Tech Companies in Government Surveillance”, Harvard Law Review, April 10, 2018, https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/cooperation-or-resistance-the-role-of-tech-companies-in-government-surveillance/, access May 20, 2020.

  91. 91.

    Chance & Necessity, “People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do”, Chance & Necessity, https://chanceandnecessity.net/2017/01/01/people-who-tell-computers-what-to-do-and-people-who-are-told-by-computers-what-to-do/, accessed May20, 2020.

  92. 92.

    Stasi was the secret police agency of the German Democratic Republic.

  93. 93.

    Data goes in two directions: the users download and upload information from the Internet, so each Internet connection will have download speeds and upload speeds.

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Rodriguez Prieto, R. (2021). ‘Cambridgenalization’ in Politics? The Spanish Act 3/2018, December 5, Data Protection Regulation and the Future of Democracy. In: Sieber-Gasser, C., Ghibellini, A. (eds) Democracy and Globalization. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69154-7_8

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