The U.S. government has said it may extent certain privacy rights to European citizens that only U.S. citizens currently enjoy.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday that the U.S. intended to "take legislative action in order to provide for judicial redress for Europeans who do not live in the U.S.," according to a welcoming statement by EU justice chief Viviane Reding. As Reding said, this could remove a major blocker in data protection negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union.
At the moment, Europeans who suspect their data privacy rights have been violated in the U.S. by companies there have no-one to complain to. By contrast, anyone can go to a European court to complain about their data protection rights being violated in the EU, regardless of their nationality. The European Commission, which is currently trying to navigate through the mess exposed by Edward Snowden last year, has long complained about this state of affairs.
This is a serious issue because Europeans using U.S. web services send their data to be processed there all the time. There's also the issue of passenger name records being sent to the U.S. -- a European who finds themselves on a no-fly list as a result of this data-sharing has no right to redress at present.
Reding said:
"The U.S. administration is now announcing that it will take legislative action to fill the gap between the rights that U.S. citizens enjoy in the EU today and the rights EU citizens do not have in the U.S. – something which the Commission has been arguing for during the past three years. This is an important first step towards rebuilding trust in our transatlantic relations. Now the announcement should be swiftly translated into legislation so that further steps can be taken in the negotiation. Words only matter if put into law. We are waiting for the legislative step."