“The political and cultural differences between Europe and
the USA are too great to make any effective protocol on data
privacy realistic. This became clear this week when EU and US
negotiators announced that after two years of talks, the US ‘safe
harbour’ principles gave sufficient protection over private data on
European citizens held in US computers.”
“There was a political imperative to produce a fudge;
transatlantic Internet commerce has been picking up speed, and
mostly moving in an easterly direction of course.”
“The obstacle that initiated the talks in the first place was
the European Data Protection Directive 95/46 ‘on the protection of
individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on
the free movement of such data’. This requires that data can only
be sent outside the EU to countries that have in place adequate
data protection. The directive came into force in October 1998, and
gives the EU the power to block the flow of personal data to the
USA – or more exactly, outside the EU. While ‘good-faith
negotiations’ were in progress, the EU agreed to a standstill in
this provision, to stop any disruption of data flows across the
Atlantic.”