IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

On January 25, 2012, the European Commission presented a proposal for a “Regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data”, the “Data Protection Regulation” (DPR). The Commissioner in charge of justice at the time, Viviane Reding, aware of the complexity of the matter, stated jokingly that she hoped a decision on this proposal would at least be reached by the end of her term, i.e. in October 2014.

Weiterlesen: The EU Data Protection Regulation after 3 Years of Negotiation

The forthcoming EU Data Protection Directive will drastically ratchet up the regulation of private data throughout Europe, with laws more tightly harmonised across the continent and even the possibility that they might be applied on an extra-territorial basis.

The proposed Directive will also have an impact along the supply-chain. In the process, the "data minimisation principle" will effectively rule out the use of big-data analytics by organisations operating in the European Union, while fines of up to €100m or five per cent of global turnover will also add sharp teeth to the regulations.

Weiterlesen: Warning for big data over EU Data Protection Directive

When the European Union Data Protection Protection Directive was passed in 1995, the concepts of data, data privacy and storage, and the potential for misuse of that data were very different. The internet, furthermore, was still young and the Directive, in any case, was largely based on the UK's own Data Protection Act of 1984.

A lot, obviously, has changed since then. And the challenge of regulating data as those shifts have taken place - the growth of the internet, social media, cloud computing and big data, for example - has been compounded by the different ways in which the Data Protection Directive has been implemented across the 28 countries of the EU.

Weiterlesen: Will the EU data protection regulations shoot down cloud social media and big data?

The health sector handles substantial quantities of personal information, including information that is deemed to be “sensitive” under European data protection regimes. For that reason, health care providers sometimes question their ability to take advantage of increasingly popular e-health cloud services.  While EU lawmakers are contemplating a “European Privacy Seal” – which could, if done properly, be useful for would-be cloud customers to assess the robustness of a cloud provider’s data protection measures – a leaked EU Council document revealed that discussions over the scheme are floundering.  We therefore learnt with interest from our colleagues at the InsidePrivacy blog that the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) jointly adopted a new standard this summer governing the processing of personal data in the cloud — ISO/IEC 27018 (“ISO 27018”).

Weiterlesen: EU: E-Health Take Note: Standards Published For Personal Data In The Cloud