Well, yes...and no. Despite flaws (#RightToBeForgotten), the GDPR has strong, well-crafted, badly needed privacy protections. But to get those protections, Europeans need their privacy regulators to enforce the rules.

That's where the GDPR miracle founders. Europe includes several tax-havens - Malta, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland - that compete to offer the most favorable terms to international corporations and other criminals.

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For these havens, paying little to no tax is just table-stakes. As these countries vie to sell themselves out to giant companies, they compete to offer a favorable regulatory environment, insulating companies from lawsuits over corruption, labor abuses and other crimes.

All of this is made possible - and even encouraged - by the design of European federalism, which lets companies easily shift which flag of convenience they fly.

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Once a company re-homes in a country, it can force all Europeans to seek justice in that country's courts, under the looming threat that the company will up sticks for another haven if the law doesn't bend over backwards to protect corporate citizens from the grievances of flesh-and-blood humans.

Big Tech's most aggressive privacy invaders have long flown Irish flags. Ireland is "headquarters" to Google, Meta, Tinder, Apple, Airbnb, Yahoo and many other tech companies.

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For many years, it's been obvious that the Irish #In exchange for locating a handful of jobs to Ireland, these companies are allowed to maintain the pretense that their global earnings are afloat in the Irish Sea, in a state of perfect, untaxable grace.

That cozy relationship meant that the US tech giants were well-situated to sabotage Ireland's privacy regulator, who would be the first port of call for Europeans whose privacy had been violated by American firms.

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