THE EUROPEAN Union and America have reached a deal on data protection. The “EU-US Privacy Shield” allows companies to store Europeans’ personal data on American computers. This ends a three-month hiatus since the European Court of Justice struck down the previous agreement, “Safe Harbour”, on the grounds that it gave insufficient protection against snooping by American spy agencies. Failure to reach a deal could have sparked a damaging legal spat, in which some European national data protection agencies could have ruled illegal all transfers of data across the Atlantic.
A transatlantic gulf separates ideas about data privacy: EU law sees it as a cherished human right; in America, it is more about consumer protection. Moreover, America’s National Security Agency (NSA)—the biggest and most powerful electronic-intelligence agency in the world—sparks fears in Europe of untrammelled snooping. The EU has no intelligence agencies of its own—so the tradeoffs between security and privacy which exist at national levels (where spymasters cooperate gladly and gratefully with the NSA) are invisible. Caught in the middle are the internet and technology companies: big ones could set up Europe-only data centres; small ones might find that doing business across the Atlantic was just too much trouble.
read full article at The Economist
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi and thank you for your interest in sharing your view.
Please be aware that your message should follow the rules of creative criticism and knowledge/ideas sharing. No defamatory, insulting, hideous, hateful, inapropriate language or targeted messages would be posted.No trademark or IP violation will be allowed nor the promotion of any commercial services or products. Of course anything that can violate others' privacy is not allowed as well.
Last, but not least, mind that it is better to have a discussion than angry monologues.
That is all. Comments welcome!