European officials yesterday tooka stand against international
pressure to compromise their data protection principles for the
sake of global business and government.
A report by the UK's
Information Commissioner recommended last week that
Europe's data protection law be "recast" in a weaker mould.
Alex Turk, president of Europe's council of data protection
authorities, the Article 29 Working Party, told a data protection
conference in Brussels yesterday that weaker standards would not
bring any sort of compromise Europe could accept.
"When we look at international standards we need to be
realistic," he said. "I don't think an entire wave of new
principles is going to give us some kind of epiphany."
"We can probably learn from exchanges with partners across the
globe," said Turk. "But I think we should stress that we are trying
to add to what we have already, rather than change radically what
is in place."
The UK ICO's report, written by US military advisers the RAND
Corporation, repeated the complaints of US multinationals such as
Google, which wantto transport personal data about the globewith
fewer regulatory fetters.
Jonathan Faull, director-general of the European Commission's
directorate of Justice, Freedom and Security, joined in the defence
of the European laws that have seen Google's business practices
repeatedly challenged by European regulators.
"Our ambition in Europe is quite simple," said Faull. "We want
the best system of data protection in the world for ourselves, and
to shine out from Europe to the rest of the world as a model."