House of Lords steps into US-EU data spat
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UK ATS pilot still not catching terrorists The House of Lords has called for some fair play in the homeland front of the "war on terror" after examining the massive data gathering exercises the US is using to build risk profiles of people travelling through its borders.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Executives from the financial data transfer company Swift and the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) faced tough questions in a European Parliament committee meeting Wednesday, about the illegal sharing of private data with U.S. authorities. ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet denied that the bank should have stepped in to prevent the breach of European data protection laws, saying that the bank could only advise the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication SCRL (Swift). "We have no judicial competence in the field of data protection," he said. Swift's Chief Financial Officer Francis van Bever explained that the company has two information storage facilities, one in the U.S. and the other in Holland. Each facility holds identical data: they serve as back-ups for each other in case one were to crash. "Each facility is subject to local laws," Van Bever said. "We were obliged to respond to the subpoena from the U.S. authorities." European law is unclear, he said, adding that after getting external legal advice in Belgium, Swift concluded that transferring the data to the U.S. authorities would be legal. "We didn't check with local data protection authorities because we thought what we were doing was legal," he said. U.S. agencies ordered Swift to share millions of pieces of information about people and companies from around the world in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The information was deemed essential in tracing the financing of terrorism, and Swift complied with the order. However, European data protection laws forbid transfers of European citizens' personal data outside the E.U. if the country receiving the data has aÂ weaker data protection regimeÂ than Europe's. The U.S. is considered such a country under European laws. In June the New York Times revealed that Swift has been sharing the data with U.S. authorities for years, sparking investigations in Europe into how the European laws could so easily have been breached. Last week, Belgium's privacy commission concluded a two-month investigation, accusing Swift of breaking Belgian and Europe-wide data protection laws. However, it stopped short of proposing fines for the company, which it agreed was caught between conflicting legal requirements on each side of the Atlantic. Many European parliamentarians drew a parallel between the Swift case and the ongoing attempts to strike a data sharing agreement that would allow the U.S. authorities access to personal data about passengers flying to the U.S.. They were unimpressed by what more than one member of the European parliament referred to as "buck-passing" when it came to handing out responsibility for the data protection breach. Trichet tried to move the debate beyond casting blame by suggesting ways of avoiding similar problems in future. "This problem is ongoing," he said. "The system we have in place is imperfect. It is very important to clarify the situation and work out what to do about such data transfers across the Atlantic." He added that any agreement between the E.U. and the U.S. should then form the basis for a global solution, because the problem is worldwide. "We need a global legal framework for situations like this," Trichet said. Swift's van Bever agreed. "We would welcome such clarification," he said, adding that the double taxation treaty could be a role model. The treaty is signed by many countries around the world and is designed to prevent people being taxed twice on the same income by different tax authorities.
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BRUSSELS, May 25 -- An independent European Union panel is investigating whether Google's Internet search engine follows European privacy rules, which tend to be stricter than those in the United States.
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The United States has reassured the  European Union that it will continue to apply restrictions on  the way it uses air passenger data until the two sides conclude  a new agreement, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.
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Last Wednesday in Brussels, a working group comprised of leading European information privacy officials concluded that a major global financial transaction processing organization based in Belgium may have violated EU law in complying with subpoenas from the US Treasury Dept. for information.
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We'll hide all the blank disks, promise The Data Sharing Review - announced by Gordon Brown after the loss of 25m records from the child benefit database - is calling for input into how government departments and businesses use and share private information about British people.â¦
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UK lays down...proposals The UK has proposed a transatlantic arrangement for sharing biometric data about travellers as US coalition countries in the "war on terror" push for a global system to control migration.â¦
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Against privacy chief's advice European police forces will have easier access to each others' information on criminals and suspects after ministers agreed a new data swap system. But Europe's data protection chief told OUT-LAW that his concerns over the system had been sidelined.â¦
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The United States has reassured the European Union that it will continue to apply safeguards on the use of air passenger data until the two sides conclude a new agreement, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.
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The battle between rival publications over Catherine Zeta Jones's wedding pictures arrives at the House of Lords.
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Google says 'there's no black and white answer' The European Union moved closer to labelling Internet Protocol addresses as personal information yesterday at a public hearing of the Civil Liberties Committee.â¦
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The US authorities have access to 34 pieces of information on every passenger travelling from the European Union.
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(InfoWorld) - Critics ofÂ last week's agreementÂ allowing European passengers' personal data to be shared with U.S. authorities have just under a month to reshape the accord before it comes into force, said Stavros Lambrinidis, vice president of the European Parliament's civil liberties committee Monday. "There is aÂ battleÂ to make this agreement respectful of European citizens' civil liberties, and it's not over," he said in a telephone interview. The European Parliament has no direct say in the shaping of an agreement that will give U.S. customs, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency free access to airlines' passenger databases to help them prevent potential terrorist attacks. However, some national parliaments will get the chance. "There are about six or seven countries that have to debate this agreement. There is still a chance to change it," Lambrinidis said. The U.S. government demanded access to information about everyone flying to the U.S. from the E.U. in the wake of the terrorist attacks in September 2001. However, by complying with the demand, airlines would have been breaching strict European data protection laws, so the U.S. and E.U. drafted an exemption clause from the laws, which they claim was respectful of European citizens' data. The European Court of JusticeÂ annulled that agreementÂ last year and gave the two sides until the end of this month to come up with an alternative. Failure to do so would leave European airlinesÂ exposed to massive finesÂ and the possible loss of landing slots in the U.S if they don't continue to hand over the data, or legal action on data protection grounds in the E.U. if they do. "It's clear that there has to be an agreement but not one like this," Lambrinidis said. The agreement that was reached during a phone call between German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, E.U. justice and home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini and U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff last Wednesday reduces the fields of data to be shared from 34 at present to 19. These fields include information such as name, credit-card details and travel itinerary. They won't include dietary requirements, which could be used to identify someone's religion. However, it extends the length of time the U.S. authorities can hold the data from three years to 15 years, and it allows U.S. agencies to dip into the databases at their will. In an interview last week, Europe's data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx, said his main concern was that the E.U. would grant American agencies the right to pull up information about Europeans whenever they want. He called for a push mechanism, meaning that database managers for the airlines would have to pass over the data, instead. Like the temporary accord it replaces, the new agreement promises an eventual switch to a push mechanism. Under the new agreement, U.S. agencies can pull up the data they want until early next year, when airlines will start pushing it instead. However, the DHS maintains the right to pull the information if airlines don't offer up the data promptly. The main concern, however, is that the agreement omits any binding undertakings for U.S. authorities to safeguard European citizens' data. The details of this arrangement aren't in the agreement itself but in an exchange of letters that haven't been made public, Lambrinidis said. Reacting to the agreement last week, Hustinx said he fears the measure could violate European citizens' rights to privacy. In addition to allowing U.S. authorities to keep the data for 15 years, there would be "no limitation to what U.S. authorities are allowed to do with the data," Hustinx wrote in a letter to Schaeuble on Wednesday after the German minister clinched the deal.
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As EU charter proclaims respect for data rights The European Parliament has condemned the EU's fondness for collecting personal information, mining and generating profiles in a resolution slamming the EU and national governments' approach to fighting terrorism.â¦
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A proposed law would require companies to keep detailed data about peopleâs Internet and phone use that goes beyond a European Union directive.
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EU and U.S. officials reached a deal on Wednesday on the transfer to the United States of private data on transatlantic air passengers for use in the fight against terrorism, an EU spokesman said.
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Top European and U.S. officials kicked   off talks on Friday to try to replace an annulled deal on   sharing air passenger data to avoid possible disruptions to air   travel when the arrangement expires on September 30.