Privacy is a primary concern for citizens today. Yet many of us willingly share vast quantities of personal information with private companies and on social media platforms even though they offer few safeguards. Cloud technology, for example, enables the storage of vast quantities of information – personal files, tax returns, family pictures, – while social media encourages us to express…
Posts tagged as “Privacy”
Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a lecture by Thomas Wischmeyer, the Deutsches Haus at NYU DAAD Visiting Fellow, on “Faraway, So Close: Transatlantic Data Flows and the Protection of Privacy.” In the 1990s and early 2000s many scholars predicted a convergence of privacy law in the EU and the U.S. They have been proven wrong. What we have witnessed is not the emergence…
On Monday I summarized the reasons that the European Court of Justice struck down the European Commission decision that permitted the transfer of personal data from the European Union to the United States. And yesterday I heard the plaintiff in that case, Maximilian Schrems, speak at NYU’s journalism school. He and Professor Ira Rubinstein (NYU Law) highlighted a critical portion of the ECJ’s judgment, but came to conflicting conclusions. The court decided that the protection of EU citizens’ privacy rights, as laid out in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, could not be compromised. Merely “adequate” protection of personal data, as required by the Data Protection Directive, is not enough; the level of protection must be “essentially equivalent” to that provided by EU law.
Max Schrems, the 20-something law student whose lawsuit triggered the end of the “safe harbor” data transfer agreement between the European Union and the United States, is scheduled to speak tomorrow at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Yesterday I scanned the opinion of the European Court of Justice in Maximilian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner in an effort to prepare myself for his talk. This was a labor for which I was not fully prepared. Nevertheless, here’s some detail on the decision that you won’t get in the news coverage—understandably because its complicated. Take a deep breath.
Schrems brought his lawsuit against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, a national regulatory body that had been charged with overseeing the handling of personal data by companies based in Ireland. The EU member states were all obliged to create national bodies like the Data Protection Commissioner by a 1995 European Council directive (the so-called Data Protection Directive). These data oversight bodies are meant to protect EU citizen’s privacy and data rights. Unlike in the US, EU law grants basic rights of personal data protection under the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.