According to usually well informed sources the Council of the European Union (the member states representatives) is ready to greenlight the so called EU US Privacy Shield.
The Privacy Shield is supposed to replace the previous Safe Harbour agreement on protection of personal data being transferred from the EU to the US. The latter was used in a sloppy way by US companies and it did not offer sufficient protection against US mass surveillance. The European Parliament has frequently called for the Safe Harbour agreement to be revoked – and finally the European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated it on grounds that it did not respect European citizens right to privacy.
Since then, the EU and US have been working hard to secure a new agreement – the Privacy Shield.
The problem is that the Privacy Shield, ruffly speaking, has the same problems as the Safe Harbour agreement. So much so that the ECJ have found that it ought to look into the matter once again. (The Max Schrems case, part 2.)
So, why is the EU so eager to give the Privacy Shield its approval? First off all both the EU and the US is under pressure from Big Data to get this stumbling block out of the way. Second, some US government agencies are getting quite frustrated. Third, the EU screwed up in the negotiations, but hopes that no one will notice (!) if they hurry to adopt the agreement.
In other words, protection of European citizens data and privacy has not been an EU priority. The Council (and the Commission) seems to be more interested in good relations with the NSA and Big Data.
Is the EU just incompetent or… evil?
/ HAX
Links:
• Previous blog post on the EU US Privacy Shield, with many useful links »
• The latest leaked EU documents (PDF) »
• Reuters: EU, United States agree on changes to strengthen data transfer pact »
• German IT Law: Data flows to the US: Why the EU Model Clauses may soon be no longer state of the art »
• The Irish Times: Data protection groups seek to join key High Court case »
• NSA Mass Surveillance: US Government wants to intervene in European Facebook-Case (PDF) »
Thanks to Amelia Andersdotter and Dataskydd.net for digging up relevant links and documents.
Remember Hanlon’s Razor, probably just incompetent.