A Comparison Of The EU And US Legislation Of Electronic Surveillance Activities And The Response Of Private Companies In The Aftermath Of Snowden’s Revelations
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2015-06-29
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Adamopoulou Aliki ,2015, A Comparison Of The EU And US Legislation Of Electronic Surveillance Activities And The Response Of Private Companies In The Aftermath Of Snowden’s Revelations, Master's Dissertation, International Hellenic University
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This dissertation was written as part of the LLM in Transnational and European Commercial Law & Alternative Dispute Resolutions at the International Hellenic University.
In summer 2013, Edward Snowden, revealed the operation of a number of mass surveillance programs conducted in violation of the legal preconditions by NSA in collaboration with GCHQ. The leaks disclosed the operation of PRISM and TEMPORA programs through which the Intelligence Agencies were obtaining direct access on major high tech companies’ servers in order to indiscriminately collect their users’ personal data, operating (via these programs) a large-scale and illegal espionage of almost everyone.
Snowden’s scandal brought up in the timeliness the legal regime under which US and EU electronic surveillance is conducted. In US, surveillance activities are regulated by USA Patriot Act 2001, FISA and Executive Order 12333. Generally, in US while a warrant is needed for US-persons, warrantless access is permitted for non-US persons. In EU regime, TFEU provides that a Member State’s surveillance activities are regulated by its national law and not by the EU law. This exemption though does not apply when a third country’s surveillance authorities assert access to EU citizens’ data. Such access is regulated by EU law and takes place after the transfer of data from an EU company to a company outside EU. Data Protection Directive provides for such transfers only if the third country assures an adequate level of protection or if the controller adduces adequate safeguards. In the case of US, Commission decided that this adequacy is provided by Safe Harbor principles. Safe Harbor, though, has been subject to extent criticism concerning the level of adequacy it provides, a criticism that has turned out to be totally justifiable since it became one of the instruments for NSA’s mass surveillance activities. The Draft General Data Protection Regulation includes significant amendments concerning the transfer of data to a third country and the disclosures to a third country’s authority of EU citizens’ personal data.
Mass surveillance scandal inevitably affected private companies with negative effects both on their reputation and economic growth. As a response private companies
-ivstarted
issuing transparency reports via which they disclose mainly the government requests they receive in relation to their users’ data. However these reports do not correspond to the transparency principle’s obligations and cannot be evaluated as an effective means of transparency.