The EU Council has issued a long-awaited plan for online privacy, moving the EU’s reform of data protection laws closer to reality.
The Council said the plan will give people more control over their personal data, but privacy groups say the proposal actually weakens privacy safeguards.
Data protection reform is important for European citizens, tech companies and any business processing personal data in the EU. Current data protection rules stem from a 1995, before cloud computing, smartphones and high-speed Internet access became the norm.
The Council plan requires that companies get unambiguous consent from individuals in order to be allowed to process personal data. Companies will also be obliged to implement appropriate security measures to protect personal data and notify affected people when breaches occur.
Under the plan, individuals will also get the right to sue companies for breaking data protection rules. Currently, people can only sue the company that collected the personal data but the EU wants to make it possible to also bring a lawsuit against cloud providers that are hit by breaches.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, three years ago issued the original proposal for a new data protection law, which the European Parliament adopted with slight changes in March last year. The Council of the EU, where national ministers from each EU country meet to adopt laws and coordinate policies, is proposing further changes. It is scheduled to negotiate details of the final data-protection reform plan with the Commission and Parliament.
Control issues
The plan as set forth by the Council, however, does not go far enough, according to European consumer organisation BEUC. It should be possible for victims of large scale data breaches to collectively file claims against companies, said BEUC spokesman John Phelan. “That is something that the Parliament very strongly and very clearly recommended,” he said.
There are also questions about how much control people will have over their data, Phelan said. Under the Council proposal, companies processing data are allowed to share data with a third party if there is a ‘legitimate interest’. That phrase is too vague, Phelan said, adding that there should be a clear definition of what qualifies as a legitimate interest.
The legitimate interest rule was also criticised by digital civil liberties groups EDRi and Privacy International. In a news release, they said the vague wording of the plan will offer a lot of scope for businesses to process data.
Privacy International and EDRi also pointed out that health data will be at risk. “The Council proposals would allow further processing of health data, including genetic data on a massive scale; indefinite retention of health data including genetic data such as whole genomes without people’s knowledge or consent; and sharing of this data with third parties, including companies such as Google, without people’s knowledge or consent,” the organisations said. Though names would be stripped from the data that is being processed, it will be donme in a way that allows results to be reconnected to individuals later on, the organisations said.
Fragmented approach
Tech companies are also unhappy with the Council’s plan. Data protection reform is supposed to put in place a one-stop-shop mechanism that would make it easier for businesses and citizens across the EU to deal with privacy-related complaints.
The original proposal for a one-stop-shop mechanism gave international companies one Data Protection Authority to deal with, rather than multiple national regulators. However, critics have said that by adding unnecessary steps, the Council has made that part of the data protection plan vastly more bureaucratic then it needs to be.
“This is not the one stop shop we were hoping for, because it allows for parallel proceedings in different EU countries. It needs more work,” said John Higgins, director general of DigitalEurope, which represents companies including Google, Apple and Cisco.
There are months of negotiations ahead before a final data protection package becomes law. The Council, Commission and Parliament need to reach a compromise agreement on a final plan. Luxembourg, which will lead the Council of the EU for six months from 1 July, intends to close the negotiations before the end of the year.
Loek Essers, IDG News Service
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