Britain | Chlorinated data

Why Google and Facebook are shifting British data to America

Projecting British law into California may prove difficult

GOOGLE AND Facebook collect more data about what people are doing on the internet—the web pages they read, the services they use, the links they click—than any other companies. Those data are used to construct profiles of internet users, against which personalised advertisements may be sold. This year, as a consequence of Brexit, the firms are moving legal responsibility for that data from Dublin, where it has sat for the past few years under European law, to California, where both technology firms have their headquarters.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Chlorinated Facebook”

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