Posts: Peter Schaar

After the House of Commons rejected the text of the treaty negotiated between the European Commission and the British Government on the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/draft_withdrawal_agreement_0.pdf), a "hard brexit" - the dissolution of the relationship without a divorce contract - has become more likely. This also has serious implications for data protection and the companies subject to it. In its statement ...
The European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection (EAID) has endorsed the Universal Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence (UGAI) presented by the Civil Rights Coalition "The Public Voice" on 23 October 2018. The guidelines are now supported by more than 50 civil society organisations. In order to enable the UGAI to be better disseminated to the German-speaking public, we have translated the text. We do not claim any copyrights for the German-language translation - ...
The idea is old, but the concrete proposal is rather new: Whereas goods flow freely in the EU internal market and digital services are offered across borders, the competence of law enforcement authorities ends at national borders. A police authority that wants to access data in the course of its investigations - for example in a fraud case - needs to contact the authorities of the state where the data are processed. How the foreign authority deal with such a request depends on the law of ...
On January 17th, 2017 US President Barack Obama published a report on digital privacy. Minutes after the transition to Trump on January 20th this report vanished from the White House Website. Nevertheless those who are interested, may read the full text of the report here, because we managed to get a copy (thanks to IAPP!)   https://www.eaid-berlin.de/?attachment_id=1575
Translation - German version see here. The European Court of Justice has made a Christmas present to more than 500 million EU citizens. With its new judgment on data retention (C-203/15 of 21 December 2016) - the highest court of the European Union stresses the importance of fundamental rights. All Member States are required to respect the rights represented in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights in their national ...
Press Release Confidentiality and security of electronic communications in Europe need better protection EAID Opinion in the course of a consultation procedure of the EU Commission on the evaluation ePrivacy Directive The European Academy for Freedom of Information and Privacy (EAID) takes the view that  the privacy of electronic communications needs better protection  by European law . This is suggested by the former Berlin Data ...
By Peter Schaar, Chairman, European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection, Berlin   What the consequences of the the UK Brexit referendum are for data protection currently cannot be said conclusively. Considerable uncertainties remain until the end of the upcoming exit negotiations at least. Unless specific arrangements on data protection are made between the EU and the UK, the United Kingdom will be seen from the EU perspective as a regular third country like any ...
Update on the Legal opinion of the Legal Service of the EP (18 February 2016) The Legal Service of the European Parliament issued on 14 February 2016 a legal opinion on the draft EU-US Umbrella agreement concerning the protection of personal data and cooperation between law enforcement authorities in the EU and the US. In this paper, published recently on the Website of Statewatch the Legal ...
The results of the trilogue of the EU institutions (European Parliament, Commission and Council) on the data protection reform package is an important milestone on the way into the global information society. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will replace 28 different data protection laws of the Member States. The reach of the new legal framework extends beyond the European Union. Even companies with headquarters outside the EU will have to comply with the GDPR so far they are ...
By Peter Schaar, chairman of the EAID, former German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (2003-2013) Amsterdam is a city of famous bridges. These days Amsterdam as well might become the city of privacy bridges. The Dutch data protection authority has been hosting the ...