Europees parlement stemt in met voortgang TTIP-onderhandelingen #2

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Release of the Full TPP Text After Five Years of Secrecy Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights

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Second to the IP chapter and sweeping menace that is the Investment chapter, the E-Commerce chapter has the next most serious ramifications for users, and it mirrors the same chapter of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) in many ways.

The supposed benefit of this chapter most touted by big tech companies is that it restricts the use of data localization laws, which are laws that require companies to host servers within a country’s borders, or prohibit them from transferring certain data overseas (in Articles 14.11 and 14.13). Although we generally agree that data localization is an ineffective approach to the protection of personal data, a trade agreement is the wrong place for a sweeping prohibition of such practices. For particularly sensitive user data, regulating cross-border transfer of that data or its storage on vulnerable overseas servers may be a valid policy option. The E-Commerce chapter does not prohibit recourse to this option altogether, but imposes a strict test that such measures must not amount to “arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on trade”—a test that would be applied by an investment court, not by a data protection authority or human rights tribunal.

This prioritization of trade interests over privacy rights pervades the rest of the chapter also. For example, Article 14.8 on Personal Information Protection contains a footnote providing that "a Party may comply with the obligation in this paragraph by ... laws that provide for the enforcement of voluntary undertakings by enterprises relating to privacy." In other words, it is perfectly okay for countries to allow online advertising networks and data brokers to write their own rules for personal data protection, provided that the law holds them to these weak and self-serving standards. To characterize this as establishing any standard of data protection at all for the TPP countries is laughable; on the contrary, it legitimizes the lack of effective protection and fails to raise the bar even an inch.

Worse than that, paragraph 5 of Article 14.8 goes further by encouraging the parties to develop mechanisms to promote compatibility between their various privacy and data protection regimes. What this means is that parties with comprehensive personal data protection laws are encouraged to treat the weak, voluntary arrangements of other parties as in some way equivalent to their own, in order to streamline the exchange of data by these parties across borders. This is the same approach that was embodied in the EU-US Safe Harbor Agreement, that was thrown out by the European Court of Justice this month.

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Op vrijdag 6 november 2015 20:52 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op vrijdag 6 november 2015 21:02 schreef Bram_van_Loon het volgende:

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Een lang en wat ingewikkeld verhaal wat weer op hetzelfde neerkomt: het verlagen van de normen naar het laagste niveau van alle normen van alle landen. In 99 van de 100 gevallen betekent dit dat wij onze normen verlagen t.o.v. Europese landen die lagere normen hebben en dat de normen van alle Europese landen worden verlaagd naar het niveau van die van de USA.