The European Commission has moved forward in its plans to negotiate a data-protection deal with the US that would safeguard EU citizens' personal information when it is transferred to the US in the course of criminal or anti-terrorist investigations.
The Commission on Wednesday said it has adopted a draft mandate to begin negotiations on the agreement, though this still must be approved by the European Council.
"We have to be clear. There can be no data sharing without full data protection," said Viviane Reding, commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, in a video message announcing the draft mandate. "Our fundamental rights have to be respected at all times. I want to make sure any agreement with the United States has a high level of protection."
The proposed agreement would give Europeans the right to access their own personal data and to have it corrected or deleted if found to be inaccurate.
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It would also give individuals the right to administrative and judicial redress, regardless of their nationality or place of residence. All the new rights would be enforced by independent public authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
The agreement will cover the transfer of data such as passenger records, financial data and internet records, the Commission said. The EU has disagreed with the US over the basis for such transfers in the past, and the level of privacy safeguards that should be applied to the data involved.
For instance, in February the European Parliament (EP) rejected a proposed interim agreement that would have given US authorities access to European financial data, arguing the privacy risks posed were too great. That agreement, which was supported by the Commission, would have allowed US investigators access to data held by the Swift banking network.
The Commission said its privacy proposal is aimed at preventing such clashes in the future by setting out an agreed, common set of legally enforceable data-protection principles that would apply to all transfers of personal data.
A legal basis would be needed separately to justify the transfer of the data — for instance, a data transfer agreement or a national law in an EU member state, the Commission said. The proposed agreement would then apply to these data transfers.
The Commission said it be committed to keeping the EP informed at all stages of the negotiations, and would be obliged to seek the consent of that parliament to any deal emerging from the talks.
Talkback
Misleading, deceptive and divisive EU Commission.
No, what the EU Commission is misleading EU citizens again. This is private data, e.g. phone call data, bank data. The citizen ALREADY knows this data, so letting them have access to data they already have access to is MISLEADING. The Fundamental rights require that this data be kept PRIVATE, to be only handed over with the permission of the person whose data it is, and only when necessary.
The EU Commission cannot offer blanket permission like that.
What the US does with that data is run correlation analysis and pattern analysis on it. i.e. it subjects the data to queries that would be illegal if run against USA data. These are not targeted queries. This is not a subset of the data on persons of interest.
It is ALL EUROPEAN internal data, handed over in bulk.
Then when a pattern is flagged, they claim suspicion of 'terrorism' or some such, and take a look at the data without a warrant. At this point the EU Commissions says that this is justified because there is a 'suspicion of terrorism'..... see what a lie this is!
EU Commissions job is not to go along with this travesty of privacy, their job is to protect European data. Their job is to get the head of SWIFT and prosecute them in court for the privacy violation they committed.
Again we see a lack of reciprocosity in the arrangements with the USA. This is unacceptable. US citizens are protected by their constitution, UK and EU subjects do not have such protection. So we end up with unbalanced and unfair 'agreements' which basically only provide for one way traffic and US superiority. Ugh!