The background: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation that aims to give residents of the EU, UK, and associated countries control over their personal data. It went into full effect May 25, 2018.
Canada's privacy legislation has been deemed equivalent to the GDPR, by those who run the GDPR.
Why does it affect non-Europeans? Any organization that handles data about people living in the EU, UK, and "European Economic Area" has to comply, regardless of where the organization is located meaning that if the people referred to do not live in EU, UK, and "European Economic Area, then it does not apply to those people.
GDPR only applies to living people which includes living WT members and other living people if they are living in the EU, UK, and "European Economic Area"
'"Since we cannot definitively determine who in our shared family tree is living in Europe, we need to assume that every living person could be." Living people who have profiles" ? if they are living and are not a WT member their profiles will not be public.
My interpretation of this: because we the members do not provide a location that is a physical address or country of residence when we join WT we only provide an email address, this means that WT does not know where we live.
WikiTree has to assume that all living members could be living in Europe, and that our privacy must be protected from disclosure by other people. If a WT member chooses to provide detailed personal information that is their choice.
No one else can do that.
The original question about obits, was about potentially living descendants or family of the deceased.
And then census information was added as a possible problem as well.
Did you see this information? Genealogy according to DSGVO
https://easygdpr.eu/en/2018/10/ahnenforschung-nach-dsgvo/
The conclusion is: Since the processing of personal data of immediate family members is not regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation and the processing of already deceased persons is also not covered, private genealogical research is still possible without any problems. The use of corresponding portals on the Internet is also expressly permitted by the GDPR.
The translation of the relevant parts of the GDPR re historical projects is interesting.