Privacy Shield Data Pact Gets European Approval (bbc.com)

A commercial data transfer pact provisionally agreed by the EU executive and the United States in February received the green light from EU governments on Friday, the European Commission said, paving the way for it to come into effect next week. This will end months of legal limbo for companies such as Facebook, Google, and MasterCard after the EU's top court struck down the previous data transfer framework, Safe Harbour, on concerns about intrusive U.S surveillance. BBC reports: Member states of the European Commission have given "strong support" to the Privacy Shield said the EC's Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova in a statement. Ms Jourova said the approval paved the way for the formal adoption of the agreement early next week. "The EU-US Privacy Shield will ensure a high level of protection for individuals and legal certainty for business," said Commissioner Jourova. "It is fundamentally different from the old Safe Harbour." The adoption of the Privacy Shield ends months of uncertainty for many tech companies such as Google and Facebook after the European court found the Safe Harbour agreement wanting. The agreement covers everything from personal information about employees to the detailed records of what people do online, which is often used to aid targeted advertising. The Safe Harbour pact let US companies skirt tough European rules that govern how this data can be treated, by letting them generate their own reports about the steps they took to stop it being misused.Ars Technica's report further explains the matter.

Comments

Nice name

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad these things invariably mean the European people end up with less privacy than they'd had before "data sharing" or whatever the euphemism is this week.

Re:Right

[Opportunist]

Since this is the EU we're talking, you can rest assured it doesn't just come with bacon but with a few barrels of pork.

coming up soon...

[ooloorie]

After the "Safe Harbor" and the "Privacy Shield", why not go for some spicier names for the next few rounds of this?

"Data Chastity Belt"
"Information Condom"
"The Internet Dildo"

So is it good or bad for privacy?

[houghi]

I have read the article and the last line says "Privacy watchers predict that the deal will end up before the CJEU again before too long." and I am still none the wiser if it is stricter or less strict or what.

Re:So is it good or bad for privacy?

[aicrules]

I believe the privacy of this deal has been successfully protected then!

Re:So is it good or bad for privacy?

[aicrules]

It allows a data transfer between the US and EU that wasn't going to be allowed before. From that perspective some group of people's privacy has been eroded. The provisions that have been finally approved make the way that data transfer is handled supposedly safer and therefore less likely to have that group of people's private data exposed to people who aren't supposed to get the data as part of the data transfer. Net result is affected group's privacy has been lessened.

Re:So is it good or bad for privacy?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The trouble is that the fundamental paradox still exists.

On the one hand, European privacy standards are stronger than the US. In particular, there is no magic exemption in the European privacy rules where the US government should be allowed to arbitrarily spy on European citizens if their data is exported to or via a company with assets in the US. Clearly the US government disagrees with this principle and wants access to everything, and it is well established that the US government does in fact take measures to do that monitoring and does consider that data its for the taking. In short, Snowden and the like have undermined the polite fiction that underpinned the previous Safe Harbor arrangement, which in theory leaves any European data controller that exports personal data to a US partner at risk of violating the data protection rules.

On the other hand, European and US businesses have a lot more options and can provide better and cheaper services to their customers if they can work together. Working together inevitably involves passing some data around that actually is reasonable and necessary for what the customer actually wants. If the companies involved are basically responsible in how they handle that data then being able to work together does little practical harm compared to European companies working with other European companies, since our own governments pose essentially the same threat to privacy and there are plenty of alliances with the US in that respect.

So this is basically a matter of principle -- the US government wants access to all the data it can find in a dragnet, which is contrary to the basic privacy rules in Europe -- vs a matter of pragmatism -- governments are widely ignoring the rules and either breaking the laws or changing their own laws to allow this kind of behaviour anyway, and banning all personal data sharing because of that special case may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if the businesses in the US are otherwise constrained to handle any exported personal data to the same standards as businesses in Europe.

Re:So is it good or bad for privacy?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Nope, because then you violate the European rules about collecting and sharing personal data. You aren't allowed to just put riders in some contract or terms somewhere saying you can collect whatever you want and use it for whatever you want and then claim the user gave their consent or something.

In practice it's rarely enforced because there aren't the resources to go after every little business that doesn't fully comply, and no-one has much interest in doing so anyway as long as they're following the spirit of the rules. But for larger companies that are big enough and doing enough with the data to attract real scrutiny and potentially real penalties, this is a legitimate concern.

Cue the next law suit

[Errol backfiring]

It was long known that this new treaty was as flawed as the previous one. This means that another law suit is needed to overthrow it again. The European Commission feels it is only accountable to foreign countries and companies, not to actual European people. You can read more on New “Shield”, Old Problems.

Re:Cue the next law suit

[rtb61]

Actually it comes off as a bit of a trap. It seems to be written to be broken, the exposed as bring broken and then far stricter rules being justified. It's like they fully expect the US government to break those rules in it's grab for total power and control and so the new shield is designed to fail. Stricter and stricter privacy rules as slowly but surely coming into being and corrupt government agencies and equally corrupt corporations are fighting them to the bitter end. It seems to have become a regular annual cycle, privacy laws are implemented, found to be insufficient and are tightened up, and this cycle is repeated again and again. M$ and windows 10 is directly threatened by these laws.