Documentaries Citizenfour and A Good American alerted us to the threat posed by mass data collection to individual freedom and democracy. But the systematic collection and processing of personal details is no longer just the domain of corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, but is being employed by smaller businesses to boost sales. While we browse, or sign up to a tempting online promotion, we rarely consider the terms and conditions when we click 'I agree'. Director David Bernet spent two and a half years following the creation of the General Data Protection Regulation, a hotly debated topic in European politics. We find ourselves in the midst of European Union debates on data protection as European Parliament MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht and Comissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding battle for regulation to protect the online community against the dangers of data collection and control.
How do we protect European citizens against the misuse of personal data for commercial gain? Democracy takes us behind the scenes of the European Union's legislative process: from early plans, through almost a thousand recorded changes, to the implementation of new legislation over data protection. An informative film about authority and democracy in the digital age, the parliamentary process, its participants and lobbyists (and how the discoveries of Edward Snowden ushered in the adoption of new European law).