IP: EU Safe Harbor Report Released 2-14-02

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Joel Reidenberg" <reidenberg () sprynet com>
Organization: Fordham Law School
Reply-To: "Joel Reidenberg" <reidenberg () sprynet com>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:58:26 -0500
To: <dave () farber net>

Dave,
 
The European Commission just released a staff working paper on the
implementation of the US-EU Data Privacy Safe Harbor agreement.  The Staff
Report makes an assessment of the implementation by US companies of the Safe
Harbor principles based on a consultant's study of "visible compliance" and
information gathered by the Commission. The Staff Report emphasizes that
Safe Harbor simplifies data exports to the United States and that few
complaints have been filed, but that "a substantial number" of companies
failed to provide the required transparency or had policies that failed to
comply with the required principles.  Indeed, the Staff Report noted that
the number of companies participating in Safe Harbor is trivial (129
organizations as of December 2001) and that fewer than 50% of those
companies had policies that complied with all of the required Safe Harbor
principles.    Since the original Safe Harbor decision accepted the
"adequacy" of this prospective mechanism for data transfers to the US and
the findings reported in the Staff Report reflect major deficiencies in the
implementation, the Staff Report is in effect a significant political
decision by the European Commission to avoid confrontation with the US over
privacy issues.   
 
A copy of the Staff Report can be found at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/dataprot/news/02-196_en.pdf
 
Regards,
 
Joel
 
********************************************
 
Joel R. Reidenberg
Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law
140 West 62nd Street
New York, NY 10023
Tel: 212-636-6843
Fax: 212-636-6899
 
Email: <reidenberg () sprynet com>
Web page: <http://reidenberg.home.sprynet.com>
 
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