Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-206-000"
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"en.20110323.20.3-206-000"2
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"Mr President, in a globalised world, the protection of personal data transferred to third countries is an increasingly important and legally very complex issue. It goes without saying that the fundamental right to the protection of personal data also applies in the electronic world and in cross-border data processing. Nevertheless, as with other fundamental rights, there may be limitations to this right; any such limitations must comply with the law and they must be proportionate. They must also be justified by legitimate interests: national security, public safety, prevention of disorder or crime, protection of health or morals and so on.
Under US law, a subpoena is an administrative order compelling an individual to provide a State or local administrative agency with specific information. The legality of an act must be determined on the basis of the law of the country where the act is carried out. Therefore, the assessment of the legality, proportionality and necessity of the US Government’s requests must be based on the US Constitution and its legal system. The Commission has no competence as regards the manner in which a third country applies its judicial procedure in investigating suspected criminal activities.
When European citizens use Twitter, they express their consent to Twitter’s privacy policy. This policy describes its procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information to third parties, including when it is necessary in order to comply with laws, regulations or legal requests from the US Government. Furthermore, as these personal data are sought from Twitter by the US authorities in the context of criminal investigations, the EU’s data protection legislation is not applicable. The EU’s Data Protection Directive does not apply to state activities in the area of criminal law, nor does a framework decision on data protection in police and judicial cooperation apply in this case, given that no EU Member State authority is involved in executing the US court order and that no personal data is transmitted or made available by the competent authority of another Member State. So that is how the law stands today.
The global dimension of data processing should not, however, imply a lowering of the level of protection for EU citizens. Indeed, global processing activity demonstrates how important and necessary it is to protect data subject rights and clarify the applicable rules. This is particularly important nowadays, when more and more data are in the cloud.
So what are we going to do about this? First, the Commission’s forthcoming proposal to reform the EU data protection framework will focus in particular on the challenges posed by globalisation and modern technologies, most of all when third-country operators target EU consumers.
Second, as you know, on 3 December 2010, the Council gave the Commission a solid mandate with clearly defined EU objectives for negotiating the future EU-US data protection agreement in the area of police and judicial cooperation. One of the EU’s main objectives in the forthcoming negotiations is to ensure enforceable data protection rights to data subjects on both sides of the Atlantic, regardless of nationality, and providing effective administrative and judicial redress. I am counting on Parliament to help this happen.
So what are we doing in the meantime, before that new instrument becomes effective? I would strongly recommend that operators be very transparent upstream with their consumers and that they indicate clearly that their service is operating primarily under US law as far as criminal investigations are concerned. Therefore it is clear that consumers are leaving EU jurisdiction even if they do not leave EU territory themselves."@en1
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