14 DAY TRIAL // The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) has complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that about thirty US companies don’t provide safeguards for European citizens, as per a promise made by the US government.
Salesforce, Adobe, AOL and other companies are compiling, using and sharing personal information about EU consumers without them being aware of this or giving their explicit consent, which is in violation of the Safe Harbor framework.
The privacy group believes all companies fall far short of the commitments they have made under the Safe Harbor, a set of regulations that allow European data to leave the continent, enter and become stored on US servers as long as the companies respect the European privacy rules.
“The U.S. is failing to keep its privacy promise to Europe. Instead of actually ensuring that the U.S. lives up to its commitment to ensure American companies provide EU consumers, our investigation found that there is little oversight and enforcement by the FTC,” said CDD’s executive director Jeff Chester.
Basically, the CDD says that US companies are actually using the Safe Harbor agreement to hide their methods of data gathering while dodging the regular scrutiny applied to such practices.
An investigation revealed that many of the companies are “involved with a web of powerful multiple data broker partners who, unknown to the EU public, pool their data on them so they can be profiled and targeted online.”
Although the Safe Harbor is perfect in theory, things are a bit different in reality. The rules were introduced after the European Union ratified data protection and privacy laws back in 1995. Without Safe Harbor, companies in the United States would not be allowed to store data on European users outside the Union’s boundaries.
Companies handling such personal data should, in theory, agree with these rules and respect them, but things seem to be far from perfect.
Aside from the fact that these companies actually cross the line and do more than they’re allowed to do, the Safe Harbor offers no protection against data requests from US courts, NSA inquiries, or FISA warrants.
Although not much has changed about the Safe Harbor in the years that have passed since the ink dried up on the agreement, officials admitted to the flaws in the system after Snowden’s revelations showed that the US government loves being able to have such control over data belonging to non-US persons.