Brussels, 31/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 31 March, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the president of the French data protection regulatory body, the Commission nationale informatique et libertés (CNIL) and chair of the Article 29 Working Group, which brings together her European counterparts, called for an international agreement with the US on gathering personal data to be used by the intelligence agencies.
At the European Parliament civil liberties committee meeting devoted to this question, Falque-Pierrotin said that “it is crucial that we get this agreement with the US on the surveillance” by intelligence agencies. She said that this agreement would complement the transatlantic framework agreement that was already being negotiated on personal data protection. This aims to set the general criteria for all future bilateral agreements in legal and police cooperation between the two parties.
Falque-Pierrotin said what was needed now was a text that was “better than existing agreements” that would provide a higher degree of protection and be able to accurately tackle the issue of US intelligence agencies' access to European data. She emphasised that there is no legal basis for the international data transfers in the context of intelligence activities. Apart from the PNR and Swift-TFTP agreements on bank transactions (two anti-terrorism instruments), there is also the “soft” approach - Safe Harbour - which allows for the transfer of Europeans' personal data to companies like Google and Facebook. Revelations of NSA acrivities, however, which may have used transfer data within the context of Safe Harbour, or even accessed databases governed by the Swift-TFTP agreement, have thrown into sharp focus the weaknesses of the legal basis linking the US and the EU. Even within the EU, Falque-Pierrotin wondered about a possible general framework on personal data collection by intelligence services. She stated that, at national level, certain parliaments, including the French parliament, were already involved in this work and want to monitor these activities more closely. The civil liberties committee is due to present a follow-up report next May on NSA activities and their impact on European data. An initial resolution was adopted in February 2014. (Solenn Paulic)