Fear not, Europe's Privacy Shield is Trump-proof – ex-FTC bigwig

"The transatlantic Privacy Shield data transfer agreement is not at risk from Trump's executive actions, former FTC Commissioner Julie Brill has promised."

To quote* the sage Mandy Rice Davies, she would say that, wouldn't she?

There are a couple of issues here:

1. Once one agency has illegally extracted data the rest can share it legally.

2. The whole thing is irrelevant. There's no way to know that data has been acquired and that there is, therefore, a reason to seek redress and the redress method is in appropriate; the appropriate jurisdiction for a tribunal to obtain redress is the data subject's own, not the offender's.

*OK, I know that's how a journo rendered her evidence for the paper, not what she actually said.

Catch-22 Privacy Act: Everyone everywhere will be slurped

* Even if you ignore everything Snowden taught us, its impossible to enforce the Privacy Act.

* For example where is the one-to-one guaranteed relationship between every US based citizen / permanent-resident and their internet accounts? Geo-IP won't cut it.

* If a US citizen logs into facebook.co.uk / yahoo.co.uk / live.co.uk, are they considered fair game for snooping? How about every US citizen living or travelling aboard etc? How about an American with an overseas partner or friend? How about all illegals living inside the US? How about non-Americans using US based VPNs / Tor services etc? How about foreign expats working inside the US etc?

* The truth is everything is hoovered up and then filtered through later. When intelligence agencies are called in front of secret courts for snooping on US citizens under the Privacy Act, they'll just continue to cover that fact up...

* We're all Muslims now... Its just that the poor have more to fear, because they can't lawyer up as easily, and won't be missed if ever renditioned to Gitmo etc...

US citizens have bugger-all privacy rights, so I don't hold out any hope whatsoever for us foreign types. US authorities can look at whatever the fuck they like with little to no burden of proof or justification, rendering the whole thing pointless.

And even if it did what it says on the tin you have to:

1) Know that your information is being misused

2) Be able to prove it

3) Spend the next decade getting your arse handed to you in court by people/organisations with more money.

"[..] fire any Attorney General who does not agree to his executive orders"

So much for the constitutional separation of judicial and executive powers. Well at least the AG won't get shot, which is just about the only difference between Trump and your run-of-the-mill tinpot dictator.

Brill can say whatever she wants, and she can even believe it, but nothing is safe from Trump at this point in time.

Oh great

So I'm supposed to be comforted by this? The US has a terrible track record on privacy and on the treatment of anyone who is not a US citizen. If they misuse my data I wouldn't know. When my data gets into a government system it's not protected. If I want to sue in a US Court I have to enter the USA and immediately forfeit all right to privacy because they will take my personal details before allowing me into their festering bunghole of a fascist banana republic.

All this references the EU, what happens when we leave? Another 'negotiation' to be carried out?

It's all a load of balls anyway as previously mentioned, data is slurped no matter what you say.

Yeah, it's a nice story..

.. pity nobody believes it.

Privacy Shield as well as this statement merely serves to shiled (sorry) US companies from the grim reality that they cannot sell services in Europe that hold any sort of personal information as it would cause their customers to fall foul of Data Protection laws. People involved at gov level in Data Protection in EU countries don't talk about this much because they still hope to avoid a trade war, but the laws are pretty clear about this - as are the lawyers involved.

This hasn't gotten as ugly yet as it should, but with Trump I can see that happen any day now, especially since he cares little for Silicon Valley.

Theatre

Sorry, but I can't bring myself to take any of this seriously. It's very well to say you can complain to US courts and whatnot, but I find it quite obvious that the US government is going to demand our private data, and get it, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

This is just a smokescreen designed by politicians to claim everything is fine.

Sounds like wishful thinking

Privacy Shield in an interesting device to protects everyones modesty, I don't think anyone really believes it makes a blind bit of difference.

It Will Happen?

It is possible that at some time an Executive Order will hole Privacy Shield below the water line. It may not be intentional, but that won't matter. One way of mitigating some of the risk may be to insist on compliance with EU data protection legislation in our procurements. For UK organisations, that means whatever regulation is relevant post Brexit. Any "in-flight" changes caused by changes in US legislation, intentional or otherwise, could trigger exit/data transfer costs to be carried by the supplier?

The problem is that the privacy provisions of the EU and the USA, and the legal restrictions around them, are not designed to protect anyone's privacy - they are actually there to create the impression that there is privacy whilst at the same time facilitating access for the state and its agents.

This is intended to suppress the desire for effective privacy by undermining the public perception and any technologies that might make privacy effective.

This can clearly be seen in the rush to enable the US to bypass EU privacy provisions under equivalency rules, where no meaningful or enforceable equivalent exists.