Privacy chief condemns weakening of EU data protection
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'Agreement should not dilute protection' Europe's top privacy official says the European Union is weakening a planned privacy protection in order to secure agreement for the proposal. He says the agreement threatens to reduce privacy protection in Europe.â¦
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Google Inc&#39;s. decision to scale back  how long it keeps personally identifiable data accumulated from  its Web users is &quot;a good step,&quot; the European Union&#39;s top  security official said on Wednesday.
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Google will tell Brussels it needs to hold on to users' search data for up to two years for security and commercial reasons after being warned it could be violating European privacy laws by doing so.
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Eyeing the agreement between the European Union and U.S. to share air-passenger data, the leader of the European Parliament's civil liberties committee pledged Tuesday to ensure that the deal was respectful of citizens' civil liberties.
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Tories warn of "state snooping'' as greater sharing of private data between Whitehall departments is planned.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- IP addresses, strings of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Parliament has delayed a vote on how to react to the U.S.' growing appetite for personal information about European citizens, in order to intensify its opposition. The delay follows a debate Wednesday evening in which the two other European Union lawmaking institutions both hardened their positions on the sensitive issue. The groups are drawing up a strategy for how toÂ renegotiate an agreement, over which they have been divided, with the U.S. over theÂ transfer of European air passenger data. The Parliament opposed the original agreement reached in 2004 to share the data -- 34 facts about every European entering or transiting through America by air, including credit card details and information about how and where a plane ticket was purchased. Even though the European Commission -- the E.U.'s executive branch -- and national governments in the 27 E.U. countries support strict European data protection laws, they negotiated an exemption from the rules in order to allow the U.S. to better protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. The European Parliament took the Commission and the Council of Ministers to the European Court of Justice over the passenger data agreement and forced a re-drafting of the law late last year. This agreement expires at the end of July and the E.U. will soon have to renegotiate the deal. While the Parliament is unlikely now to call for the complete scrapping of the agreement, it may well demand a shorter list of categories of data to be handed over. It may also demand that only U.S. immigration officials be granted access to the information. In a debate at the European Parliament Wednesday, Germanyâs deputy foreign minister, Guenther Gloser warned that negotiations with the U.S. will be âtortuous.â Germany holds the six-month rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. The European commissioner in charge of justice and home affairs issues, Franco Frattini told Parliamentarians that he has demanded an explanation from his counterparts in Washington D.C. about an apparent misuse of Europeansâ data that flouts both the original passenger rights' agreement as well as its replacement agreed last year. Frattini's concerns focus on the U.S. Automated Targeting System, which has been assessing millions of people since 2002. Some members of the U.S. Congress and privacy advocates believe the program is even illegal under the more lax U.S. data protection laws. "The right to privacy for me is nonnegotiable. It has to be respected," Frattini told the parliamentarians. Frattini's and Gloserâs speeches took many members of the Parliament by surprise, according to one Parliament official actively involved in civil liberties issues. "The MEPs were due to vote on an agreed position regarding the new round of negotiations with the U.S. today, but they have agreed to postpone the vote until the next plenary session in Strasbourg," she said, asking not to be named. The next plenary session is Feb. 12-15. "There is a mixture of joy and skepticism among the parliamentarians after hearing the strong language expressed in defense of Europeans rights to privacy," she said. "It would seem that the Commission and the Council of Ministers are both coming around to the Parliament's way of thinking on this urgent issue." The text is likely to take an even stronger line as a result of the delay, she said. The U.S. has threatened to fine airlines that fail to hand over the records, and to strip them of their landing rights in the U.S. Without any agreement, the airlines will be put in a difficult position: punished if they don't hand over the information, or sued for breaching European data protection laws if they do.
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Google is told that it may be breaking EU privacy laws by keeping search data for up to two years.
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BRUSSELS -- IP addresses, strings of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.
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Commissioner has a mull A little-noticed system that allows printed documents to be tracked by government agents has gotten the attention of the EU Commissioner for Justice Freedom and Security, who says the technology may violate EU human rights guarantees.â¦
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Europe&#39;s top privacy guardian, the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx said he expects the U.S. and the European Union to reach an agreement on how to share information about passengers flying across the Atlantic, but not by the July deadline.
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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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U.S., U.K. among worst-ranked "democratic" countries in terms of privacy protections for citizens, says 2007 International Privacy Ranking report.
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The Conservatives on Wednesday demanded a government statement on the handling of data on foreign crime suspects after authorities admitted they had failed for a year to match details sent by the Dutch police on 15 serious crime suspects held in the British DNA police databank.
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Ministers face calls to bring in safeguards to protect people's privacy against the police DNA database.
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The European Union's top security official yesterday lauded Google's decision to scale back how long it keeps personally identifiable data accumulated from its users as a step towards addressing privacy concerns.
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Proposed legislation in some European nations has been accused of expanding too far beyond an EU directive and threatening citizens' privacy.