ONLINE PRIVACY RIGHTS : MIXED US REACTIONS TO COMMISSION'S PROPOSALS.

The proposals to strengthen online privacy rights, unveiled by the European Commission on 25 January, have received a mixed reaction so far from key US stakeholders. A spokesperson for the social network Facebook told Europolitics information society that the more harmonised framework envisaged by the Commission was a positive step but that provisions on data breach notifications, fines and the right to be forgotten' could be problematic to implement. By contrast, a representative from a Washington-based online privacy lobby group warmly welcomed the proposals and predicted they would incentivise US policy makers to update the country's privacy laws. The US administration's priority, meanwhile, is to ensure that the future EU regime will be interoperable with the US system and will not hamper the growth of the internet.

According to Erika Mann, director for EU affairs at Facebook, the single set of rules in the form of a regulation being proposed is an improvement on the current framework, which is fragmented due to varying national interpretations of the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. Mann, who was a German MEP from 1994-2009, voiced concern, however, about the provision requiring data breaches to be notified within 24 hours, noting "this is not always so simple to do". The Commission's proposal that companies may be fined up to 2% of their annual turnover for breaching the privacy law also was "not really helpful," she added, arguing it would be better to instead promote more positive cooperation with national data protection authorities. On the right to be forgotten', she said "we support this in principle" and pointed out that Facebook users have the right to remove their profile from the system at any time. What would be trickier to implement, she predicted, was removing content which has since been moved to other websites. Overall, Mann said she hoped the new legislation would take into account the positive role that internet-based companies have played in promoting jobs and innovation.

"FAVOURABLE DYNAMIC"

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, called the proposals "thoughtful and far-reaching,"...