Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, is pushing for the swift conclusion of a follow-up agreement to the “Privacy Shield” between the EU and the US on transatlantic data traffic. “People are increasingly relying on data streams – from online shopping to travel and shipping to office collaboration, customer management and security measures,” explains the legal expert. “The ability to share information is the foundation of the global economy.” But such data transfers are “more and more in danger”.
With his plea for a new relevant framework, Walker is primarily referring to a decision by the Austrian data protection authority last week. Accordingly, the use of Google Analytics by a local web provider does not offer an adequate level of protection, since the US security authorities theoretically have the ability to access user data.
Self-service instead of requests
Google has been offering services in connection with the statistics program for global companies “for more than 15 years” and “in this time it has never received a request that the data protection authority speculates about”, the also for the care of the global relations of the US Group managers on the other hand. “Nor do we expect” that such a request will ever be made. The scope of the relevant US security laws does not allow for this.
In 2020, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the data protection shield and thus one of the most important bases for the transmission of customer data to the USA to be invalid, referring to possible mass surveillance by US security authorities. It is known that the NSA, for example, does not make any inquiries to companies, but serves itself. Nevertheless, Walker was “convinced that the extensive additional measures that we offer our customers ensure a practical and effective protection of data to any reasonable standard”.
(bme)