Sarah speaking about safe harbor agreements for business data (Ilford North Liberal Democrats)

Ilford North Liberal Democrats <dominic247@btinternet.com>

Sarah speaking about safe harbor agreements for business data

May 7, 2008 12:00 AM
By Sarah Ludford in European Parliament
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

Madam President, in 2000 there was an agreement on safe harbor arrangements for business data transferred to the US. But we have never got beyond that to draw up common transatlantic standards. What is happening increasingly is the transfer of commercial data, notably passenger data but also banking and telecom data, to public authorities for security purposes.

This is not the context to raise the civil liberties concerns, but there is an important economic dimension. Obviously, if business travelers experience undue delays, that is a cost. But even more burdensome is the considerable cost imposed on companies.

In the United States my understanding is that there is provision for cost reimbursement, but in the EU there is no consistent policy. For instance, in the Data Retention Directive, we left it to Member States to decide if they would compensate telecoms companies. It would be interesting to do a check how many actually do. But the result is that the European Union is hardly in a strong position to push for a common transatlantic framework not only for privacy standards, which is vitally important, but also for dealing with the economic impact of data collection when companies are used as agents for public authorities.