EU Parliament rubber-stamps 'irreversible' data protection reforms

EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding scored an important victory in the European Parliament today after securing support for a rewrite of the 28-nation bloc's data protection laws. Proposed changes to the DP Regulation secured 371 politicos in favour, 10 against and 22 abstentions. Altogether 276 MEPs voted for the DP …

[Charlie Clark]

She's right

Same law across the EU for everyone and the European Commission with enough powers to enforce. The national governments won't try and dilute this much further. But there will be attempts to do so via the secretive TTIP,

[Lars]

TTIP

I think the ISDS part is the problem and should not be included in the TTIP.

[tsal]

On balance, good imho

New legislation is always a hassle and often costs businesses money, but I still think this is a smart move that will (a) increase inward investment in EU based IT infrastructure, and (b) put pressure on other nations to tighten data protection laws.

I work with a number of clients who already insist on serving data to the US from the EU for data protection reasons. If implemented, these reforms are only likely to increase this.

[Pascal Monett]

"data protection is more than ever a competitive advantage"

Bless the EU once again.

Now I only have one question : is this going to protect EU citizens from US and EU snooping, or just US snooping ?

[BlueGreen]

The lady is totally bitchin'

Nice that someone has the necessary balls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Non EU

Shame they dont allow people to say they dont want their data stored or processed outside the EU. Would kill off outsourcing outside of Europe and generate European jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Non EU

Shame they dont allow people to say they dont want their data stored or processed outside the EU. Would kill off outsourcing outside of Europe and generate European jobs.

Actually, they do, but without people having to explicitly declare this (which is the game right now). It means any EU company holding data deemed personal can in effect no longer legally host that in the US as the protection there is now declared insufficient (you may note they quietly nuked the Safe Harbor excuse in the process, which is IMHO one of the best things they could have ever done).

Or, let me translate that for you: Silicon Valley has just been told to go home when it comes to hosting EU data that requires compliance with Data Protection.

I predicted in January that 2014 would be the year of privacy spin because the US has SERIOUS problems providing credible evidence that data can he held safely (originating in federal law, so it's not like that can be fixed in anything shorter than a decade). I was honestly not expecting that the EU would be prepared to nuke the last excuse out there (Safe Harbor), because that was implemented as a purely political fix.

It appears the EU has grown balls large enough to stand up against the usual blackmailing and trade sanctions threat the US deploys when it doesn't get its way (the whole reason a self certifying scam scheme like Safe Harbor would ever be considered acceptable), and I applaud them for that. It's been a while since the EU had that kind of leverage, and it will benefit local industry no end.

Not I expect this to last - I suspect there will be import tariffs soon, or non-US business will get extra IRS audits - you know, clean, classic strong arm tactics. You heard it here first (and yes, I'm a cynic, but it turns out to be closer to reality than optimism would be).

I'm wondering just what this will do in the UK to stuff like Office 365. With the Cabinet Office already suggesting ODF would be a better idea, this cannot be good news for Microsoft either.

This will be interesting to watch..

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it.

Hopefully what they come up with will be a good range of laws that will be required as a bare minimum. If countries want to be stricter in some way, surely that should be allowed?!