[Chapter-delegates] European data protection laws vs. membership

[borka at e5.ijs.si]

Marcin,

The safe harbor principle with U.S institutions
despite the mutual signatures never worked and is
not anymore concerned as valuable protection of personal
data by EU officials (this is  well known all over EU,
confirmed by study and survey). In short: it was
left out!

Your solution to ask your members for permission
to send data abroad of EU is the right approach
as they are owner of their data.


With regards,

Borka


On Fri, 29 Jun 2007, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

> Marcin,
>
> I think we are pretty well covered on that issue. See:
> http://www.isoc.org/help/privacy/
> "The Internet Society certifies that it adheres to the Safe Harbor
> framework and principles <http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/index.html>,
> as approved by the European Union (EU)."
>
> See also
> http://web.ita.doc.gov/safeharbor/SHList.nsf/f6cff20f4d3b8a3185256966006f7cde/22605998c16cd7068525725e007a04f7?OpenDocument
>
> Best regards,
>
> Patrick
>
> Marcin Cieslak wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> At ISOC Poland we recently stumbled into a legal problem - Polish (and
>> the European Union) data protection laws forbid transfer of personal
>> data abroad unless the country implements similar or stricter personal
>> or data protection measures. The United States are known not be such a
>> country.
>>
>> There some exceptions to the rule (like when it is necessary to execute
>> some kind of contractual agreement in name of a person involved), they
>> don't apply directly to society members however.
>>
>> We are considering some integration possibilities to send data of our
>> new members automatically to the Internet Society so that they can
>> become "global members". How can we do this to reduce legal hassle?
>>
>> I can see some solutions to this:
>>
>> 1) Ask our prospective members to specifically agree to the abroad
>> transfer. In case they don't agree they can't become global members
>> (not a good solution as we have no legal ground refuse their local
>> membership then).
>>
>> 2) Check the legal situation where the ISOC membership system can be
>> stored and administered. The website
>> http://www.privireal.org/content/dp/switzerland.php
>> claims that Swiss laws are equivalent to the EU ones since the year 2000.
>>
>> Is it possible that personal data could be hosted and administered by
>> the Geneva office and therefore we (at least EU countries) could avoid
>> this problem?
>>
>> Any other solutions/ideas? Anyone (esp. from EU) looked into this before?
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>
>
>
> -- 
> Patrick Vande Walle
> Check my blog at http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
> Jabber me at patrick at vande-walle.eu
>
>