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back to article Police, Google and Facebook warned on data protection

European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said citizens have the right to proper data protection, and the "right to be forgotten", and deserve national regulators which will enforce the rules. Legislation will be published in the summer to ensure that all Europeans' personal information is properly protected. Reding told …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Oh oh....

    "For example, a US-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules."

    Yeah, good luck with that....

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      title

      If they're operating in the EU, they need to comply with the law...

      If they don't like the law, then they can go away. I for one would be quite happy if facebook did just that.

      2 0
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Say what you like...

    National governments will continue to ignore any regulations they don't like, if they interfere with massive invasions of citizens privacy.

    See uk.gov

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  3. oldredlion
    FAIL

    Good luck

    "For example, a US-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules."

    There is no chance that a US company will comply if the US government orders them to do something that is against EU rules, no chance at all.

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    1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge
      Reply Icon

      until that is ...

      European carriers are ordered to block access to them.

      There is already precedent on this sort of activity - for example Youtube getting blocked in various countries until they removed certain videos (Turkey comes to mind).

      An outfit the size of (say) Facebook may well not have any legal presence in the EU, but faced with a choice of comply with EU law or lose all your EU customers, I suspect they'll comply fairly quickly.

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      1. oldredlion
        Reply Icon

        but the

        Trouble is, if the US company is giving EU citizen's information to the US Government in secret, we won't know about it and nor will any EU regulator.

        I'm thinking of the Twitter/WikiLeaks case; we only know about it because Twitter sought legal guidance on the validity of the Government request. We do not know what was in the original request, nor do we know which other companies - if any - were asked for information.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sir / Mr / Miss / Mrs

    The article also mentions more transparency upfront.

    Certainly any US company will hand-over all of it's member's private data if asked to do so by it's government (and probably shares it by default anyway).

    But part of the proposal is to make it less able to opaquely collect the data in the first place - ie Google Street view snapping wifi aswell as photos, Facebook hidden opt out privacy nonsense, etc.

    Pushing some of these data collections from hidden opt-outs to visible opt-ins should help privacy a little bit at least.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Paypal UK blocks transactions to Cuba

    even though it is governed by EU banking regulations.

    Apparently, its US parent company obliges it to. It's fucking ridiculous - and that goes for the embargo on Cuba as well.

    The US will continue to do whatever it feels like, whether it is outside its borders or otherwise.

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  6. Sam Therapy
    Unhappy

    The right to be forgotten

    So far Europe's legal bods haven't forced the UK gvt to do that so good luck with enforcing it this time around.

    I'm all in favour of these proposals -and the implied kicking given to the ICO but where's the teeth?

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