Europe Cares About Privacy, So You Must Too
In late January, the European Commission published a proposal "on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data."
The commission also published an introductory statement about the proposal and a staff analysis of the impact of the proposal. The proposal is extensive, more than 100 pages covering every facet of the gathering, processing, movement and protection of data about people. In concept, the proposal does not differ all that much from the existing European approach to data collected by businesses about people. The principles are the same: get permission from individuals before you collect information about them, tell them what the information will be used for, only collect what you need, only keep it for as long as you need to, protect the information properly and do not give the information to someone who will not protect it.
But the new proposal adds some requirements and a lot of operational detail to these principles as well as some rather big teeth to be sure that the rules are followed. A company can be fined up to 2% of its worldwide cash flow for willfully disregarding the requirements.
