European Union Data Protection Directive

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While the European Commission is seeking to update its 15-year-old Directive regarding the protection of personal data, several regulations have been passed to strengthen privacy rights in Europe. With all this activity, it’s clear that the United States is not the only country trying to adapt its privacy and information security standards to rapidly evolving technologies and marketplaces. Companies with an international presence need to stay alert to stay compliant. We can help!
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With social networking sites proliferating across international boundaries, privacy and data protection concerns are becoming increasingly relevant. With these concerns in mind, the Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, adopted an opinion on online social networking on June 12, 2009.

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On May 12, 2009, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) released a much anticipated report authored by the RAND Corporation assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) (the "Directive), the main source of privacy legislation in Europe. While the report highlighted a number of the Directive’s positive attributes, it nonetheless concluded that as society becomes more globally networked, "the Directive as it stands will not suffice in the long term."

Several Google executives, including the Company’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, will face criminal charges in Italian court stemming from Italian authorities’ two-year investigation of a video posted on Google Video showing a disabled teen being taunted by classmates. The video, posted in 2006, depicts four high school boys in a Turin classroom taunting a classmate with Down syndrome and ultimately hitting the young man over the head with a box of tissues. Google removed the video on November 7, 2006, less than twenty-four hours after receiving multiple complaints about the video. Nonetheless, Fleischer and his Google colleagues face criminal charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal information that carry a maximum sentence of three (3) years.
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