Right at the end of the inter-service consultation process in the European Commission (the almost final step before a legislative proposal is launched), the United States Department of Commerce launched a significant lobbying campaign against the leaked draft proposal for a Data Protection Regulation. The campaign included high-level phone calls from senior figures in the US Department of Commerce to top level staff in the European Commission covering topics such as US business, multilateral and bilateral treaty organizations, PNR, national security, law enforcement, trade and innovation. A somewhat less critical, but nonetheless alarming,“informal note” was also circulated (pdf). Partly as a result, several Commission services, including OLAF (the internal anti-fraud unit whose data processing is not covered by proposals), issued negative internal opinions at the end of the inter-service process. These will now need to be taken into account by Commissioner Reding’s staff before the final proposal can be launched at the end of January.
Read more on EDRI. (Update: see comment below that points out that the referenced paper was not the work of the Commerce dept. by of the FTC)
Image credit: © Pavel Kusmartsev | Dreamstime.com
This non-paper appears to have been drafted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency, and not the U.S. Commerce Department.
Glad you pointed out that error in their comments – thanks!