MEPs demand privacy safeguards on cross-border policing
Slate ministers' 'lowest common denominator deal'
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
MEPs have voted to insert data protection provisions into a proposed framework on police and judicial cooperation, meaning the European Commission will be required to pay as much lip service to the proposals as it can be bothered to.
The provisions included a stipulation that authorities should only have access to data held by “private operators” on a case-by-case basis, under judicial control.
The European Parliament was voting on whether to adopt a third report on the proposals. The Parliament's own statement on the vote said it would “beef up the data protection provisions” of the proposal.
The MEPs felt the text had been weakened by a 2007 “political agreement in the Council [of Ministers]”, which they described as being “a lowest common denominator deal”. These included the scaling back of the deal to only cover exchanges of data between states, and not within states.
MEPs are demanding that the text should apply to data processed at national level and that “particular data should be paid to the purposes to which personal data may be utilised”.
They also want article 7 strengthened, to prohibit processing of data covering the likes of race or ethnic origin, political opinions and religious or philosophical beliefs. Which we can only hope will leave existentialists and Young Hegelians free from state persecution.
On a more bureaucratic level, the MEPs have called for a working party “on the protection of people with regard to the processing of personal data”. In an impressive show of activity, the MEPs also produced a report in which they said the battle against terrorism should not constrain freedom of expression. The report was on Commission proposals for three new terror offences: public incitement to commit terrorist offences, recruitment for terrorism, and terrorist training.
MEPs demanded clearer definitions and proposed safeguards for fundamental freedoms, and stressed that private communications should be respected.
Which amounts to a busy day’s work for MEPs just back from their summer breaks. Will this valiant defence of privacy sway either ministers or commissioners? We’re sure it will be at least as effective as any other grandstanding effort by Strasbourg. ®
COMMENTS
What is this? Restore my faith in government month?
I'm seeing a number of positive initiatives recently - patent workers on strike demanding they be allowed to do a better job, US judges coming down against RIAA snooping and now this! It's playing havoc with my cynicism. Okay, this isn't perfect but it's good to see some MEPs care enough about this to try and do *something*. Anyone know the names of those responsible? They deserve some good publicity, I'd guess.
Paris - because she cares deeply about privacy, too.
At least they're talking about it
From the headline I had assumed that the proposal would have been "no privacy for anyone except state officials". That would have followed the usual principle of "One rile for us, one rule for them" that seems to have become the norm lately.
The fact that individual privacy is a concern at these levels is good. Now, lets have some strong protections please.
Pedantry mode on: actually it's Brussels at the moment
The European Parliament building in Strasbourg is actually closed at the moment because the ceiling fell in. MEPs are meeting in Brussels instead.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
