Victoria Guzman
Two months ago, the European Union’s
top policy makers agreed to a data-sharing pact with United States officials.
The agreement, called E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield, would allow companies to
continue sending personal data back and forth across the Atlantic. However, the
bloc’s national privacy regulators said, “The deal did not go far enough to
safeguard the personal information of Internet users in Europe.” National
privacy watchdogs from France, Germany and other European Union member states
have noted that American companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) could face
country-by-country legal battles[1].
The article goes on to discuss the worries and protests regulators have about
the deal. There are a lot of negative insights in this article about the
Privacy Shield deal.
One major issue is that once
citizens’ personal data is transferred to the United States, American
intelligence agencies will have full access to it. In Europe there are many
protections for citizens’ personal data, which would not be met in the United
States. Europeans want to monitor how their data is used in the United States1. Regulators’ have major concerns over
their privacy and data.
I would have liked to see more
positive insight on the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield deal and more background
information on the deal itself. This deal is providing strong obligations on
companies in the U.S. to protect the personal data of Europeans, stronger
monitoring and enforcement by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Federal Trade
Commission. The Privacy Shield was the result of the requirements set by the
European Court of Justice when the court ruled the old Safe harbor framework
invalid[2].
In practice, American companies have to display privacy policies on their
websites, reply promptly to any complaints, and cooperate and comply with
European Data Protection Authorities. For Europe, individuals would have more
transparency about transfers of personal data to the U.S. and stronger
protection of personal data. In case of complaints, they would have easy and
cheap redress possibilities with the help of the Data Protection Authority[3].
There is a lot of information about
transferring data and the protection of data, but what type of data will be
transferred between the United States and Europe? It could be social media,
search queries and e-commerce purchases. Companies like Facebook and General
Electric collect and manage this online data[4].
Overall, this article was great in explaining the concerns with the Privacy
Shield deal. Even including information on a European privacy campaigner, Max
Schrems, who had a case against Facebook, which led the court to invalidate the
Safe Harbor pact. Personally, I understand the concerns by European citizens. The data privacy laws in Europe are much more complex and are “on par with
other fundamental rights, like freedom of expression,” and the U.S. just does
not meet their personal data privacy expectations. I understand why European citizens would be worried about their personal data ending up in the wrong hands, I would be too. What I learned from
researching this topic and this article is that the only way for the Privacy
Shield deal to go through is if the U.S. commits to reforms that comply with
human rights and international law in order to meet the standard of the
European Union. It will be interesting to see the new regulations in the Privacy
Shield set in the next few months.
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