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On Tuesday, officials in Brussels proposed new measures to curb Silicon Valley players who—up until now—have been largely immune from the ePrivacy Directive, which  requires telecoms operators to adhere to the rules on the confidentiality of communications and the protection of personal data.

As part of its planned overhaul, the European Commission, the executive wing of the European Union, said that it planned to beef up the measures by switching from a directive to a “directly applicable regulation” to ensure that the bloc’s 500 million citizens “enjoy the same level of protection for their electronic communications.” It claimed that businesses would also benefit from “one single set of rules.”