edri.org writes that the United States authorities have produced another lobbying document to influence the European Union’s decision making on European citizens’ fundamental right to privacy and data protection.
Strangely, the document itself is not on headed paper and contains no authorship information. All of the lobbying documents produced so far have been in support of the positions taken by large US corporations and the adoption of US-style weak privacy protections in Europe.
Much of the joint US-government and corporation lobbying has centred on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation that the proposed legislation constitutes a huge revolution, rather than, for the most part, a reiteration of existing principles – improving implementation of legislation that has often been wilfully ignored, to the detriment of European citizens’ rights. The latest US document maintains this unfortunate trend.
Political comedy
The document explains that privacy should not be approached as a “legal harmonization exercise” but instead “interoperability of frameworks” as this is what the United States and EU have “always done”. In other policy areas, however, the USA has no problems with imposing its will on other countries. For example, the United States keeps a so-called Special 301 “watch list” of countries that fail, in its view, to maintain adequate levels of protection of “intellectual property” rights andthreatens those countries with sanctions if they do not follow the orders of the United States.
Political rhetoric
Instead of reasoned argument, the document launches straight into a bizarre range of desperate and groundless claims about how the proposals are going to lead to terrorism, financial meltdown and… the last refuge of the…(read the rest of the story HERE).
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