EU Citizens Data Rights to be signed away in secret

If you bump into David Davis MP you might ask him about the Framework Decision of the EU on transfer of Personal Data which Statewatch have helpfully posted

This covers the transfer of personal data and information/intelligence between EU member states. The Council has simply ignored all the criticisms of the measure from the European Parliament, the European Data Protection Supervisor, the Article 29 Working Party on data protection and civil society.

They are of course obsessed by the decisions made during the last EU-US summit under the Slovene EU presidency (9-10 June), when the US and EU agreed that "the fight against transnational crime and terrorism requires the ability to share personal data for law enforcement." see post Saturday, June 28, 2008 Signing away the data privacy of 400 Million European citizens - Bush has a timetable and his pen ready to sign up

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor (who has done more to protect your rights than DD ever has) , remarks that the "binding international agreement" between the EU /US about to be agreed will " In fact ... cover any criminal offence" however minor. There is no guarantee EU citizens will be informed that data and information on them has been transferred to the USA or to which agencies it has been passed or give them the right to correct it. Moreover, the agreement would apply to individual requests and automated mass transfers and allow the USA to give the data to any third state "if permitted under its domestic law".

It would be good to say that the USA must guarantee the same rights to people when personal information is transferred between EU states but this would be meaningless as the Council is about to adopt a Framework Decision which gives individuals few if any protections against misuse and abuse."

The whole history of how data rights of all EU citizens have been negiotiated in private can be read in detail at Statewatch's Observatory on data protection in the EU

This quotes the entertaining Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the US DHS (pic) who said, in November 2007, on the EU requirement that data can only be passed to third states whose laws passed the "adequacy" test guaranteeing equivalent rights:

"The EU should reconsider its decision to apply notions of adequacy to the critical area of law enforcement and public safety. Otherwise the EU runs the very real risk of turning itself into a self-imposed island, isolated from the very allies it needs" (Privacy and Security Law)

He is also opposed to the EU's draft Framework Decision on data protection in police and criminal matters (covering the exchange of personal data within the EU), on this:

"The draft seeks to apply the same tired, failed standards of adequacy that it has applied in its commercial laws." [EC Directive 95/46/EC)

The 1974 US Privacy Law gives no protection to non-US citizens, from the EU or elsewhere.

Rosenweig is well known as a prominent champion of government data-mining and was heavily involved in the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project - now finally dumped even after they re-named it Terrorist Information Awareness. Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco said of him, " He tends to view privacy as something to be circumvented." (Pic here of Rosenweig in a famous Washington brothel)

Read the Statewatch Observatory , the detailed obituary on your personal data rights .. there is nothing you can do , your data rights have been pissed away whilst David Davis was posing around Howden. You can receive an e-mail news alert to Statewatch here or even send a few bob.