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EU parliament calls for Privacy Shield to be pulled until US complies
- guitarbill 8y agoMax Schrems is great, and the hero we need. But I’ll believe it when I see it, that the EU parliament dares to vote against such massive business interest. GDPR was one thing, this is a totally different level.
- akie 8y agoBut... they already voted on this. From the article: (the EU parliament) "takes the view that the current #PrivacyShield arrangement does not provide the adequate level of protection", "calls therefore on the Commission to suspend the Privacy Shield until the US authorities comply" https://twitter.com/bendrath/status/1014832868969910273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1014832868969910273&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch.com%2F2018%2F07%2F05%2Feu-parliament-calls-for-privacy-shield-to-be-pulled-until-us-complies%2F https://twitter.com/bendrath/status/1014832868969910273?ref_...
- Angostura 8y agoYes. I really wouldn't like to be the Commission facing this one at the moment, particularly since the current US administration will presumably see this as related to the larger international trade-war. My personal opinion is that this isn't tradewar politicing by Europe, it's the result of a genuine interest in citizen's privacy, but I can see why it could be taken as such.
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago> particularly since the current US administration will presumably see this as related to the larger international trade-war. It's not just the administration. Every time the EU has levied fines against Google a lot of Americans on HN claim that the EU is doing it because they're jealous of how successful American businesses are.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoYeah, one would assume that when one signs a treaty with another country you try to honor that treaty. The US generally doesn't give a damn and will usually do what it wants anyway.
- Tomte 8y agoAnd that you structure your country so that you can comply. In the case of Karl and Walter LaGrand there was a clear violation of the Vienna Convention, a binding verdict by the International Court of Justice, a sympathetic US President, but the Governor of Arizona didn‘t care, and America just said „too bad, we signed this convention, but if a state doesn‘t want to comply, what can we do?“. And SCOTUS confirmed that stance.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> And that you structure your country so that you can comply That really ought to be taken into account in the treaty negotiations. If a company signs an agreement the company can't legally comply with, that tends to have the effect of nullifying the agreement more than forcing the company to change. (Tends to. Generally.)
- azernik 8y agoThis is not a binding vote; however, it does indicate an avenue for more hardball action (specifically, giving a deadline by which it will consider the Commission non-compliant with GDPR unless it takes action).
- simonh 8y agoMassive US business interests. Why should the EU parliament care about that? There's an obvious solution for Facebook et al. Host their primary data centers in the EU and move their US user data there, instead of vice versa.
- beberlei 8y agoIf privacy shield gets scraped, then I might have to switch my European business to use only European third party services. At our company we use a carefully selected number of U.S. services that we believe have the interest of their customers and data at heart, but without privacy shield we might not be allowed to use them. The massive downside for me as EU business: 1. Lost time and money having to migrate. 2. Usually european companies providing the same service are worse, leaving me and my customers worse off.
- simonh 8y agoOh absolutely. In other words, you'll be in exactly the same situation US businesses are in, that rely on Chinese and other suppliers that are now subject to tariffs. Politicians, eh? Hope someone wins this trade war soon so we can get it over with.
- madez 8y agoThis is not a trade-war issue. This is a long planned review of the Privacy Shield regulation. Even if all trade conflicts ended, this would continue because it is not about trade but fundamental rights.
- davidvaughan 8y agoIt is possible that the resolution gained more votes because of the trade war. In general, Members of the European Parliament have less understanding of business and trade than businesspeople and traders, and in my view[0] tend to follow their emotions more in those areas. Some also have a streak of anti-Americanism, in varying degrees. As the heat increases, this sort of resolution may occur more frequently. I'm sceptical of the notion that MEPs all voted according to their devotion to fundamental rights. None of this means that I believe pursuing the resolution into legislation is a bad or a good idea. I'd have to see (and understand the consequences of) the proposed measure. [0]This is an impression; I have no empirical data
- lumberjack 8y agoThey are not business interests within the EU.
- mehrdadn 8y agoKind of a tangent (secant?), and this is a rather broad discussion topic, but is anybody else also worried that the EU is going to lose some of its teeth with Brexit and such coming up? I'm wondering how all these regulations will play out in the next few years if members decide the EU isn't serving their interests. Will serious enforcement take place, or not? Because if not, it seems likely to me that companies might try to "wait it out" and avoid full compliance with regulation for a while, to see what happens.
- ealexhudson 8y agoNo; if anything, they will gain teeth. For many years, the UK has been a strong influence in a variety of directions (pro-swpat, for example, but often anti-regulation), many of which were not well-aligned with their continental cousins. The EU27 are better aligned without the UK, and will move forwards more quickly in many areas the UK would have held them back. Ongoing integration is very much still the plan. In the meantime, the UK will have to stay very close to EU rules in order to continue to trade with its largest market. However, it already has little/no say in future rules, and that will stop altogether in March.
- mehrdadn 8y agoThanks! But note that by teeth I meant the ability to enforce, not the ability to legislate. I expect the more countries leave or lose interest, the easier it is to legislate, but the less leverage they have for actual enforcement, so I'm wondering how that balances out.
- zavi 8y agoPlace your bets: how many years til EU kicks Fb/Google/Amazon out of Europe?
- jarfil 8y ago260, give or take some. The EU has no interest in kicking anyone out, for as long as they pay taxes in the EU.
- pluma 8y agoWell, this was completely predictable. Privacy Shield seemed extremely flaky considering how suddenly Safe Harbor was shot down. I hope most European companies were smart enough to drop hard dependencies on US companies for privacy relevant data during their GDPR audits.
- wemdyjreichert 8y agoThis is, yet again, the EU trying to legislate for the whole world.
- hluska 8y agoHow can cancelling an agreement with one other nation be considered legislating the whole world?
- mark_edward 8y agoLook at it with the eyes of a whiny american who doesn't understand what a treaty is.
- foepys 8y agoWell, considering the US is invading and bombing counties all over the world for various reasons, the EU way is a bit less aggressive, don't you think? I also never understood why Americans think that is bad. The EU is making their market less attractive, so shouldn't Americans be happy about that?
- pitaj 8y agoI'm not happy when the liberty and quality of life of foreigners is damaged.
- madez 8y agoThe EU is working on securing the fundamental rights of me and the people around me, thereby enhancing my liberty and quality of life.
- plopilop 8y agoAs a European, I'm quite happy the EU wants to protect my personal data from being arbitrarily raided over without any warrant by your government for the simple crime of not being American, but thank you very much for your concern.
- kodablah 8y ago> The parliament is also calling for “evidence and legally binding commitments” to ensure that data collection under FISA Section 702 is not “indiscriminate Ha...this I doubt will ever be provided. And if it is provided, will it be seen by the citizenry? They're either going to have to cave on the "no indiscriminate collection" requirement, accept an invalid definition of "indiscriminate" or "collection", or flat never re-agree to the agreement. Because, sadly, indiscriminate collection of data isn't stopping.
- stickfigure 8y agoI don't see how this can possibly end well. I live in the US; I have many friends in Europe; how exactly is Facebook/Google/etc going to separate our data geographically while still displaying it in our feeds/inboxes/etc? There really seems to be only one realistic endgame: The end of the multinational corporation. Pick a jurisdiction, keep your servers & employees inside, and tell the rest of the world to get soaked. If Europe really wants to control their citizen's data, they're going to have to start firewalling, China-style. I'm guessing privacy advocates imagine the world will homogenize on a set of Euro-compatible policies and everyone will live happily ever after? That seems far less likely than a set of mutually-incompatible enforcement regimes, like we already see with China and Russia. So what does Facebook/Google do? Disallow friending/email/communication across political boundaries?
- tareqak 8y agoThere is another endgame that I will concede is considerably less likely to happen, but I will maintain remains possible: the end of the modern-day nation-state. My evidence for this claim? Very few nation-states if any are growing as fast (in terms of net worth) as the largest multinationals, but the multinationals are still relatively agile (read as able to mobilize their strength behind a common agenda). Sure at the moment, the largest multinationals have only as much net worth as some of the poorest countries. However, look at how cities and states try to out compete each other in order to have companies like Amazon and Foxconn set up their headquarters. How soon will it be until countries start competing with each other for something similar (building your next regional data center in EMEA? here are the contenders). If the multinationals really wanted to milk it, then they could totally make a game show out of it à la Eurovision.
- supercanuck 8y agothen who would monopolize violence in that scenario? What stopping us from a might is right type world?
- tareqak 8y ago1) The multinationals of the future. 2) Time, insufficient money in the present-day, and regulations/political will.