Spying Fallout: Conservative Calls for End of Data Pact

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-politician-wants-to-end-safe-harbor-agreement-with-us-a-930703.html



With members of his party calling for consequences in the NSA spying affair, a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's sister party says he wants the EU to cancel its Safe Harbor data agreement with the US.

Spying Fallout: Conservative Calls for End of Data Pact
By Björn Hengst
October 29, 2013 – 05:29 PM

For US Internet giants like Facebook and Google, the so-called "Safe Harbor" pact between the EU and the US is extremely practical. The agreement allows US companies doing business in the EU to transfer personal data like the birthplace, telephone numbers and email addresses of EU citizens to the US. More than 3,000 US firms joined the program, including, among others, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

The 1998 agreement has come under criticism time and again because of the lax data privacy laws in the US. Although the Safe Harbor agreement provides for a level of protection for the transferred data according to EU standards, data protection advocates often voiced doubts about how seriously it was being implemented.

The concerns grew in Brussels by the time former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the secret monitoring program of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US, and it became known that companies like Facebook and Google had provided data to the NSA. EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding has called the Safe Harbor agreement a "loophole," rather than a "protection of our citizens." For years, audits have revealed serious breaches of the Safe Harbor rules by US companies.

So far, the German government has not pushed at the EU level for the agreement to be renegotiated or cancelled. But that is now changing. Manfred Weber, a member of the European Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel's sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is now calling for a radical restructuring of the relationship between the EU and the US as it relates to data.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth