Reform of EU Privacy Laws (Maybe) Coming Soon
While we have been hearing about the possibilities of changes to European privacy laws for some time now, the prospects of reform appear to be increasingly likely.
In a Jan. 28 speech, the European Commission’s newly appointed Commissioner for Technology, Information Society and Media Viviane Reding declared that European privacy rules must be revised to keep pace with changes in technology. New rules are not only necessary to protect individual privacy rights, she said, but also to provide legal certainty for industry and to ensure consumers adopt new technologies. Reding identified social networking websites, Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and airport security technologies — including full-body scanners — as areas of concern. (You can read her full speech here.)
While some may view the prospects of new legislation with trepidation, it is undeniable that the EU privacy laws require revision to address the current age. The main data protection instrument (Directive 95/46/EC) was enacted in 1995, which, when it comes to technological developments, might as well be light years away from today. While a full-scale revision of Directive 95/46/EC may not be in the cards, reform efforts that eradicate some of the legal uncertainty that present exists and modernize certain aspects of the existing legal framework should prove helpful.
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ABOUT
Jacqueline Klosek, Senior Counsel in the Business Law Department of Goodwin Procter LLP, is a frequent author and commentator on data privacy and security. You can email her at jacquelineklosek@gmail.com -
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