Jun 6, 2016

Is your data really safer in Europe? Deirdre Mulligan in the Christian Science Monitor

From the Christian Science Monitor

Is your data really safer in Europe?

By Kenneth A. Bamberger and Deirdre K. Mulligan

Many privacy advocates cheered when Europe’s chief data protection watchdog rejected a proposed framework for allowing companies such as Facebook and Google to transfer Europeans' personal data to the US.

Transferring that data without additional protections renders it too vulnerable to US intelligence surveillance, Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli concluded last week in his formal opinion about the pending data agreement known as Privacy Shield....

Although his opinion puts the US in the hot seat to craft an agreement that will satisfy Europeans, it also recognizes that the issue of government surveillance is both an American and European problem. Rather than providing a rationale for limiting data transfers to the US, these concerns should prompt further privacy reforms on both sides of the Atlantic.

Focusing only on the US would indulge two widespread fallacies about the relative levels of privacy protection in the US and the EU. Action based on these flawed ideas will increase rather than decrease the risks to personal privacy....

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016