---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: La Quadrature du Net <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 8:48 PM Subject: [opennetcoalition] Major Loopholes in Privacy Regulation - Parliament Must Stand For Citizens To: [email protected] Themes: EUROPEAN DATA PROTECTION, PRIVACY, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, JAN PHILIPP ALBRECHT, LOOPHOLES La Quadrature du Net – For immediate release Permanent link: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/major-loopholes-in-privacy-regulation-parliam... Major Loopholes in Privacy Regulation - Parliament Must Stand For Citizens *** Strasbourg, 21 October 2013 — The “Civil Liberties” (LIBE) Committee had just voted its report on Data Protection, led by Jan Philipp Albrecht [1]. Despite some improvements, major loopholes – especially on “legitimate interest” and “pseudonymous” data – and the adoption of the secrete tripartite negotiation mandate (trilogue) could make the final text totally ineffective at protecting citizens. During these forthcoming negotiations, representatives of the Parliament should secure strong safeguards for citizens fundamental right to privacy. *** By adopting compromise amendments 6 [2] and 20 [3], members of the “Civil Liberties” (LIBE) Committee, responsible of this matter, introduce the risk to make the whole legislation completely ineffective, despite the progress made tonight – explicit consent principle have for example been mantained. The Members of the LIBE Committee also made the very disturbing choice of accept the secrete tripartite negotiations [4] requested by the rapporteur Jan Philipp Albrecht. The text will now be modified behind closed doors, between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council (ministers from the Member States) . The latter could use untransparent negotiations to annihilate all the positive provisions of this Regulation, leading to a weak and dangerous final version of this legislation. To begin these negotiations in this way will undermine the European Parliament's position, and reduce the chance of public debate and citizen mobilisation. In absence of democratic and transparent debate, the representatives of the European Parliament in these opaque negotiations should make sure that the achievements for strong safeguards for citizens' fundamental right to privacy are protected, even if that means postponing the adoption of the final Regulation. It will be better to have a real protection of European citizen privacy at the end of a long process, than a dangerous weak text before the next European election. The Parliament must seize the occasion of plenary vote to remove the dangerous loopholes opened by today's vote. “Even though today's vote marks some advances for the protection of privacy, it introduces major loopholes that could make the whole Regulation ineffective. However, the regrettable choice of the LIBE Committee to enter into secrete tripartite negotiation could significantly weaken the Regulation. Representatives of the European Parliament will have to weigh in all along the negotiation process to make sure that the fundamental right of European citizen to privacy is fully protected.” concluded Miriam Artino, policy analyst for the citizen organisation La Quadrature du Net. * References * 1. https://memopol.lqdn.fr/europe/parliament/deputy/JanPhilippAlbrecht/ 2. This compromise may turn the “legitimate interest” exception into the main legal basis for processing, depriving citizens of any prior control (such as explicit consent) over how their personal data are processed. ( http://www.edri.org/files/eudatap/06COMPArticle06.pdf) 3. This compromise would void any protection against profiling based on “pseudonymous” data. But “pseudonymous” data may still be easily attributed to data subjects through further processing. Thus, any profiling based on such data must stay under data subjects' control. ( http://www.edri.org/files/eudatap/20COMPArticle20.pdf) 4. https://www.laquadrature.net/en/data-protection-regulation-la-quadratures-vo... ** About la Quadrature du Net ** La Quadrature du Net is an advocacy group that defends the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet. More specifically, it advocates for the adaptation of French and European legislations to respect the founding principles of the Internet, most notably the free circulation of knowledge. In addition to its advocacy work, the group also aims to foster a better understanding of legislative processes among citizens. Through specific and pertinent information and tools, La Quadrature du Net hopes to encourage citizens' participation in the public debate on rights and freedoms in the digital age. La Quadrature du Net is supported by French, European and international NGOs including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Society Institute and Privacy International. List of supporting organisations: https://www.laquadrature.net/en/they-support-la-quadrature-du-net ** Press contact and press room ** Jérémie Zimmermann, [email protected], +33 (0)615 940 675 http://www.laquadrature.net/en/press-room _______________________________________________ Opennetcoalition mailing list [email protected] https://laquadrature.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opennetcoalition -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/