Europe is gearing up to keep American tech companies at a tighter leash for being lax at implementing rigid policies for European consumer data protection.
At the front of the agency coming after American tech companies is Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who has over the years become the strongest advocate and watchdog against companies like Facebook, which handles a large amount of personal data on Europeans every day.
Falque-Pierrotin, who currently leads a group of European data protection officials, has 10 years of experience heading the advisory board of the French Internet Rights Forum under her belt.
“American companies do not have an immediate right to collect data on our citizens,” Falque-Pierrotin, 56, told The New York Times. “If they are on our soil, then they need to live with the consequences.”
The move to enforce strict regulations over offshore tech companies came after the European Court of Justice put the kibosh on a 15-year old agreement that allowed American companies to move and store data on European citizens in the U.S., which essentially gave American government unimpeded access to mine the data, according to The NYT.
The court’s decision came in light of Edward Snowden’s document revelation that exposed the vast reach of government surveillance and spying of private citizens.
And now the European Commission and the Commerce Department are moving ahead to reach a deal by Feb. 1 on deciding the fate of the tech companies’ hold on European user data. The response comes after a Falque-Pierrotin led team of national regulators reportedly pushed to see a change.
The case not only has the privacy of Europeans at stake, but also billions of dollars worth of cross-border trade, which could heavily impact U.S. based companies like Google and Pfizer, which move user data including patient information to American data centers for processing and storage.
The situation seems even more perilous under Falque-Pierrotin’s lead, for she has in past demanded extensive reforms like giving Europeans the power to ask companies like Google to remove them from any search queries in the world, as The NYT pointed out.
However, so far, Falque-Pierrotin’s effort to get attention of American agencies to impose compliance of European data protection laws have fallen on deaf ears.
In December last year, Falque-Pierrotin reportedly wrote to the Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission to get past the blockage and reach a resolution, but she was met with resistance and ignorance.
This defiance might very soon lead to even stricter laws imposing bigger fines on American tech companies. In one such instance two years ago, Google was fined €150,000 for non-compliance of European privacy rules.
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