Information Tecnology Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Information Tecnology Law - Essay Example After holding talks for a couple of years with the EU, the US, to the initial chagrin of much of Europe, was able to wrest an agreement that would bail out its companies from the rigid standard of the EU. The EU/US Safe Harbor agreement is a compromise pact that would allow US companies to receive personal data from the UK despite the finding of inadequacy of US data protection system. The EU/US Safe Harbor agreement, which almost relies on self-regulation of its member organisations, suffers from fundamental structural and procedural lapses that weaken its effect. The EU Data Protection Law The United Nations was the first international body to delve on the issue of data protection during the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1968. It posed the question as to whether limits must be set in the use of electronics to protect privacy rights. Subsequently, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) drafted the Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data in 1980 whilst the Council of Europe came up with Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard Automatic Processing of Personal Data also in the same year. The non-binding OECD Guidelines preceded a heated disagreement between some European countries and the United States where the former charged the latter of intentional laxity in its data protection laws as a strategy to globalise its computer industry and the latter accused the former of protectionism through data protection. The OECD Guidelines therefore, was a compromise o f the conflicting stance of the parties. On the other hand, the Council’s treaty came about after considerations in the difficulty, especially by multinationals, in transferring personal data from one country to another because of the different procedural elements in each country. The need to harmonise these different procedural elements was the primary objective of the treaty.2 As the emergence of a European common market loomed in the horizon, the European Council finally gave in to the longtime suggestion that it comes up with a Directive that would tackle data protection. In 1990, the EC issued Directive 95/46 also known as the Data Protection Directive, which has since been described as â€Å"the most influential international policy instrument to date.†3 It was formally implemented on October 1995, with Member States given until 1998 to amend their respective laws to conform to its provisions. Whilst the Council’s earlier treaty was aimed at harmonising na tional laws on data protection, 4 the primary objective of Directive 95/46 is to protect the individual’s privacy as a basic right. This Directive is a consolidation of all efforts to obtain a uniform data protection laws in all Member States, because differences in levels of data protection hamper the free flow of personal data from one Member Country to another, which can result in difficulty in the implementation of a unified European market.5 The rights that are embodied in the Directive are put in a nutshell by Article 8 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, which took effect in 2009 concurrently with the Treaty of Lisbon. These rights are: the right to protection of personal data; the right to have personal data processed