New European rules aimed at curbing questionable transfers of data from EU countries to the US are being finalized in Brussels in the first concrete reaction to the disclosures on US and British mass surveillance of digital communications.
Regulations on European data protection standards are expected to pass the European Parliament committee stage on Monday, after the political groupings agreed on a new compromise draft following two years of gridlock on the issue.
The draft would make it harder for the big US Internet servers and social media providers to transfer European data to third countries, subject them to EU law rather than secret US court orders, and authorize swingeing fines — possibly running into the billions of dollars — for not complying with the new rules.
“As parliamentarians, as politicians, as governments we have lost control over our intelligence services. We have to get it back again,” German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Jan Philipp Albrecht said, steering the data protection regulation through the parliament.
Data privacy in the EU is currently under the authority of national governments. Standards vary enormously across the 28 countries, complicating efforts to arrive at satisfactory data transfer agreements with the US. The current rules are easily sidestepped by the big Silicon Valley companies, Brussels says.
The new rules would ban the transfer of data unless based on EU law or under a new transatlantic pact with the US complying with EU law.
“Without any concrete agreement there would be no data processing by telecommunications and Internet companies allowed,” a summary of the proposed new regime says.
Such bans were foreseen in initial wording two years ago, but were dropped after intense lobbying from Washington. The proposed ban has been revived directly as a result of the uproar over operations by the US National Security Agency following disclosures by former employee Edward Snowden.
Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for justice and the leading advocate in Brussels of a new system securing individuals’ rights to privacy and data protection, says that the new rulebook will rebalance the power relationship between the US and Europe on the issue, supplying leverage to force US authorities and technology firms to reform.
“The recent data scandals prove that sensitivity has been growing on the US side of how important data protection really is for Europeans,” Reding told a German foreign policy journal. “All those US companies that do dominate the tech market and the Internet want to have access to our goldmine, the internal market with over 500 million potential customers.”
“If they want to access it, they will have to apply our rules. The leverage that we will have in the near future is thus the EU’s data protection regulation. It will make crystal clear that non-European companies, when offering goods and services to European consumers, will have to apply the EU data protection law in full. There will be no legal loopholes any more,” she added.
Yet the proposed rules remain riddled with loopholes for intelligence services to exploit, MEPs say. The EU has no powers over national or European security, nor its own intelligence or security services, which are jealously guarded national prerogatives. National security can be and is invoked to ignore and bypass EU rules.
“This regulation does not regulate the work of intelligence services,” Albrecht said. “Of course, national security is a huge loophole and we need to close it, but we can’t close it with this regulation.”
Direct deals between the US and individual European governments might also allow the rules to be bypassed.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
RSS