30/8/2016 (Agence Europe) – On Monday 29 August, the US group, Google, announced that it had submitted a request for certification from the appropriate US Department responsible, in order to participate in the Privacy Shield commercial personal data sharing mechanism. This mechanism has been the subject of negotiations with the EU and Commission and was definitively adopted on 12 July by the latter. In a note on its blog, Google explained that it is committed to "applying the Privacy Shield protection to personal data transferred between Europe and the US. We welcome the legal security it brings". The "Article 29" Group, which brings together the different European data protection authorities, welcomed the progress made by the Privacy Shield, compared to its Safe Harbour predecessor but expressed a number of reservations, particularly about the access capacity for US intelligence agencies to this data. The group believes that the provisions in this area are still too weak. (SP)