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Documents Reveal Details of EU-US Privacy Shield Data Sharing Deal (betanews.com)

Posted by timothy on from the just-gentleman-agreeing-to-read-your-mail dept.

Mark Wilson writes: Details of the data sharing arrangements agreed between the US and EU earlier in the month have been revealed in newly published documents. The EU-US Privacy Shield transatlantic data transfer agreement is set to replace the Safe Harbor that had previously been in place. The European Commission has released the full legal texts that will form the backbone of the data transfer framework. One of the aims is to 'restore trust in transatlantic data flows since the 2013 surveillance revelations,' and while privacy groups still take issue with the mechanism that will be in place, the agreement is widely expecting to be ratified by members of the EU.

35 comments

  1. Hey Euro-weenies..... by bazmail · · Score: 5, Funny

    ....you can trust us again. Honest. lol!

    1. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Exactly this. The whole roaring whine about the EU "disintegrating" when confronted with one crisis is really disingenuous. The point is we EUsians don't trust our institutions, and that with reason[1]. Weasel words like restore trust in transatlantic data flows since the 2013 surveillance revelations don't make it better (that was irony, I swear).

      No wonder people in the EU are voting populists everywhere (no, I don't think is the way to go, and I don't know whom I find more repugnant: those populists or those plutocrats. Both make me vomit).

      [1] Remember that the highest boss of this clownerie, Jean Claude Juncker has openend a tax haven in the middle of the EU, at the detriment of us all. And this is just the tip of a giant, stinking iceberg.

    2. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by prefec2 · · Score: 2

      The sad thing is that some people decide to vote for nationalistic parties, which are not the solution to the low regard to human rights and especially to equality. In addition right wingers are only able to say what they do not want, but they never say how they want to solve any crisis (except for statement pointing out that the problem can be solved by making it the problem of some else, for example Greece).

      What we have to do it make a large step towards democracy and make clear to "elites" that this is all our country/countries. Anyway, we can sue again regarding the new treaty and we should keep up the fight against TTIP, TiSA, and CETA.

    3. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe your view would change drastically when your house or street is bombed and shelled or get a late or early morning visit with bullets knocking on your door.

    4. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wasn't aware that they're having a war in Greece. Please elaborate.

    5. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      I assume the point the AC was trying to make was that if you'd visited certain parts of Europe a few years ago, what was happening might not have been war in the tanks and RPGs sense, but the aftermath looked disturbingly similar. We literally had rioting in the streets, and not just in Greece. In some places law and order lost effective control for a while, and in some places the people lost effective control of their governments for a while.

      The fact that these things could happen in supposedly civilised first-world democracies is quite scary if you think about it. Many of us don't think our governments or political systems or electoral mechanics are perfect, often with good cause, but we tend to take a lot for granted and those days were a very clear reminder of how fast things could fall apart if we switched effective government off.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    6. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you really believe that you are more in control of the EU than of your national government? How do the Americans here like their national government constantly extending its reach into the individual states by abusing the inter-state commerce rule? Federalism is a good idea, but power gravitates to the top. So, to maintain a system of cooperating individuals (counties, states, nations), you have to limit that tendency and enforce that limit. Otherwise you end up with central government removed from the interests of the people. The pro-EU people who are against TTIP, TiSA, and CETA are schizophrenic.

    7. Re:Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ....you can trust us again. Honest. lol!

      Not until Jan 20, 2017

    8. Re: Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Maybe your view would change drastically when your house or street is bombed and shelled or get a late or early morning visit with bullets knocking on your door."

      Sorry you already gave up your rights to firearms. I understand defending yourself with a spoon is hard...

    9. Re: Hey Euro-weenies..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Devils avocado

  2. I smell a loophole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is a tremendous victory for privacy, individuals, and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. We have spent more than two years constructing a modernized and comprehensive framework that addresses the concerns of the European Court of Justice and protects privacy."

    So what's it really like in there? Any lawyers around able to make heads or tails of it enough to find just how much it'll erode the privacy it supposedly protects?
    Because I trust these people about as far as I can throw the sun.

    1. Re:I smell a loophole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This thing exists so that corporations can do what European privacy laws would otherwise forbid them to do. Stupidly it creates an incentive to move data processing to the US and US companies, because European companies handling the same data are bound by stricter laws, so they can't compete with companies in countries with lax privacy laws. This "deal" is like making domestic companies produce only flame retardant insulation, but allow anyone to sell imported insulation that isn't flame retardant.

    2. Re:I smell a loophole by Sique · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's just a band aid for a patch for a prothesis. Basicly it gives pause until the next lawsuit also invalidates Privacy Shield. The reason why Safe Harbor was deemed illegal was that European citizens had no legal standing when their data was requested from U.S. companies by the U.S. government. Privacy Shield now gives European citizens a pro forma legal standing, but now any U.S. governmental organization can deny the actual case going to court. I doubt that this will suffice in the eyes of the European Court.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    3. Re: I smell a loophole by nachtelfjeiu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I heard an analysis from a Dutch lawyer on the radio. Basically it's a swiss cheese of holes. For example: as soon as someone yells "terrorist" all rules and limitations go overboard. Besides, the whole FBI vs Apple thing makes it blatantly obvious where they stand on privacy. They want everything to be inherently insecure and accessible to them.

    4. Re: I smell a loophole by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      For example: as soon as someone yells "terrorist" all rules and limitations go overboard.

      The trouble is, that is a cultural problem, and it's common to both the US and the EU. The average MP or MEP or US Representative has little power to affect it directly, and probably in reality neither do European courts. A trade agreement just isn't big enough to change the now-established rules of the game, so you might as well write the trade agreements to do as much good as you can. In this context, that probably means preventing commercial exploitation of European citizens' data to the same standards as in Europe even if the data is exported to the US.

      By all means advocate for stronger privacy protections or more limited government powers as well if that's what you believe in. But in the current political climate, I think you'll need a lot more than an argument about data sharing between allied nations to convince the Powers That Be to stop their mass surveillance programmes, and for better or worse, that's probably true regardless of anything the law actually says on either side of the Atlantic.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  3. The king is still naked. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And we can still see.

  4. spiritual (r)evolution unstoppable dna upgrade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    meeting the needs... thanks moms.. who would want to interfere anyway is curious?... our kids are more aware than us of our surroundings now? cease fire... in the moms we trust... motive=results,,, creational sleekness never fails us...

  5. Food for thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have found numerous comments in the German media which describe the 'Privacy Shield' as a bad joke.

  6. Liberate the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm an EU citizen and I'm tired of the US invading our privacy. The only real solution is to send our militaries across the Atlantic to free the Americans from their corrupt government. If we really want privacy, we need to go to war with the US. It's the only solution. Without war, the US won't take the EU seriously.

    1. Re:Liberate the US by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      You'd be attacking the wrong government. Your government is the one that is supposed to protect your privacy. If it doesn't then replace it.

    2. Re:Liberate the US by chihowa · · Score: 1

      I'm an EU citizen and I'm tired of the US invading our privacy. The only real solution is to...

      Unless the end of that sentence is "hold your own government accountable for its corruption", you haven't thought about it very hard.

      I know (hope!) that you were being facetious about going to war, but I hope you realize that you're better off trying to clean up your own government first. A good start is to start blaming your "representatives" for their actions instead of letting them off the hook every time they start bleating about the Americans.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    3. Re:Liberate the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The American People will welcome you as liberators!

  7. Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This kind of arrangement also means that small European businesses can legally use US-based services to do useful things where there aren't any equivalent EU-based services. As someone running small European businesses, I can tell you first hand that this is the situation all too often. I'd be happy to use equivalent home-grown services instead, but sometimes we just don't have them.

    For example, I have a business that sells stuff online. It probably wouldn't have been commercially viable to get it up and running without US-based payment processing services. Imagine what would happen if every small business in a similar position had to close, how many people would lose their jobs, how many products and services wouldn't be delivered to customers who want them.

    I'm all for making sensible long-term policy, I'm all for promoting European entrepreneurship, and I'm all for protecting privacy and personal data. These are all good things, and concerns about how national governments and security services use that data are reasonable. But there are a lot of other people trying to get at that data as well, and allowing international services while still protecting EU citizens from having advertisers and insurers and credit agencies and all the rest getting hold of data on them just because some European business they dealt with happened to use US services is a good thing too.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    1. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'd be happy to use equivalent home-grown services instead, but sometimes we just don't have them.

      And now you know why. How can anyone expect home-grown services if their potential customers are allowed to violate European law by sending the data to foreign corporations? Does that pattern look familiar? Yes, it's offshoring: The US is to the EU like China is to the US (and the EU, of course), except with regard to privacy protection instead of environmental protection. This, btw, is how privacy dies: on the altar of economic development. Not only are we getting these ridiculously named workarounds ("privacy shield", seriously?), the "trans-atlantic bridge" is already spouting anti-privacy propaganda wherever they get a chance in the EU.

    2. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      We don't have native European versions of these services because tech investment in places like Silicon Valley is orders of magnitude greater than in comparable start-ups almost anywhere in Europe. This is a well-known problem, with implications far wider than just privacy.

      The fact remains that some of those US businesses, having established themselves at home first, have then spent years dealing with regulations in other places including the EU so they can operate here as well. Again, this often covers areas like financial or health regulation, not just privacy.

      Now those services are here, and in some cases there is no indication that anyone closer to home is even trying to enter those spaces, so any native European alternative solution is surely several years away at a minimum. In the meantime, should we just stop things like selling anything to Europeans on the Internet, and close down the many thousands of smaller businesses across Europe that depend on some of these services?

      I admire your principled stand, really, but politics and regulation are pragmatic fields. You can't win the war overnight, but that doesn't mean you stop fighting the battles you can win in the meantime, and it doesn't mean you adopt a scorched earth policy.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    3. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So we're supposed to ignore our laws just so you can use American businesses to handle your customers' data instead of creating demand for similar but legal services in the EU? These illegal treaties, "Safe Harbor" and now "Privacy Shield", make sure that there never will be alternatives to the privacy invading companies you use to make a buck while selling out your customers. EU businesses still need to obey the law that US businesses get to shirk, so they are at a competitive disadvantage. If the solution to that were lowering our standards, then why don't we lower our environmental and worker protection standards as well? Right, those are OK, because you're not a steel worker, coal miner or assembly-line worker in a car factory. You want your air clean while you circumvent the law from your desk.

    4. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      So we're supposed to ignore our laws just so you can use American businesses to handle your customers' data instead of creating demand for similar but legal services in the EU?

      There has been demand for similar services in Europe for as long as in the US. They built them. We didn't.

      These illegal treaties, "Safe Harbor" and now "Privacy Shield", make sure that there never will be alternatives to the privacy invading companies you use to make a buck while selling out your customers.

      European businesses weren't offering alternatives anyway.

      EU businesses still need to obey the law that US businesses get to shirk, so they are at a competitive disadvantage.

      This is fundamentally wrong on two counts.

      Firstly, the whole point of these schemes is to require US companies to comply with the same data protection standards as EU companies, and thus allow trade between them without compromising personal data. Aside from the governmental intrusion issue, the system has been reasonably successful in this respect.

      Secondly, if you think EU companies aren't subject to similar influence from their own governments and national security organisations, I know a Nigerian prince with a great deal of money he'd like to invest with you.

      What would put EU companies at a competitive disadvantage, by which I mean put a lot of them out of business, is forcing them to jump through artificial hoops that offer no extra protection in real terms where their competitors in other countries don't have to.

      If the solution to that were lowering our standards, then why don't we lower our environmental and worker protection standards as well?

      The solution isn't to lower our standards, it's to promote higher standards elsewhere. And that is what these rules do, in significant and useful ways, in the US. They just don't go as far as you'd like, and for some reason you seem determined to discard any useful progress at all if it doesn't immediately achieve 100% of what you want, while at the same time offering no actual solution to the real world problems yourself.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    5. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They just don't go as far as you'd like

      It's not a matter of what I like. These treaties are ILLEGAL. Politicians push them through anyway, because they can't be held responsible, and when one treaty is put down by a court of law, they have the equally illegal successor ready to replace it. It's corruption, plain and simple.

    6. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      It's not a matter of what I like.

      Yes, it is. A lot of people are fearful of threats like terrorism, and support their governments in taking these kinds of measures. Most countries' data protection rules, in Europe as well as the US, admit various exceptions in relation to national security and the like. You don't have to like it. For that matter, neither do I. But the issue is not nearly as one-sided as you're making out.

      These treaties are ILLEGAL.

      It's difficult to have a constructive discussion if you don't understand how international agreements or legal systems work. Assuming you're the same AC I replied to before, how specifically is a treaty illegal, as you keep saying? And even if something here is illegal, why do you think politicians who have been empowered to legislate can't change that?

      If you don't like the way politicians are handling this issue, the best things you can do are to make sure your representatives know your views on the subject and to try to convince other people to do the same. Ultimately the quickest and most reliable way to change the amount of power and trust that governments and their agencies receive is to vote out the ones you don't want and replace them with someone better.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    7. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the highest court saying that something is illegal isn't enough to convince you that it is indeed illegal, then you're not a reasonable person. But you already admitted that you don't give a shit about the law when you explained that violate European privacy laws for profit.

    8. Re:Look at it from the other side as well by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      As I said, it's difficult to have a constructive discussion if you don't understand how international agreements or legal systems work. Evidently you also don't understand either what the relevant European court ruling actually said or what the European data protection rules actually are, nor do you seem to have any interest in either developing your understanding or discussing useful alternative ways to deal with the problem, so I think we're done here.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  8. Privacy Shield... LOL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's funny how the 'authorities' name shit completely opposite of what it is.

  9. Newsless news by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    You can skip that one. TFA contains nothing beyond US and EU official quotes. And the quotes are just void statements about restoring trust.