Data protection in post-Brexit Britain

After roughly 5 years of tense negotiations, the United Kingdom finally exited the European Union. Following this exit, the UK government has made it clear that they view Brexit as an opportunity to enact new legislation, diverging from EU rules. One of the areas where the UK is keen to lay down different rules than the EU, is the area of (not?) regulating the ways new technologies are to be used, and how citizens' personal data is handled where it is used as a necessary component of such technologies. On the 10 September 2021, the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) launched its public consultation for proposed reforms to the UK's data protection regime. This document is written in response to the open consultation proposal. This blog post presents a recap of the most interesting, and frankly: harmful, propositions in this consultation document, which we have analyzed more in-depth in this analysis.