On January 28, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bi-partisan bill, known as the Judicial Redress Act, that would grant Europeans the right to request access to records shared by their governments with U.S. agencies conducting criminal investigations. The measure also allows Europeans to correct records shared with the U.S. if these are wrong and to sue the American government in U.S. courts if the government intentionally discloses their personal data without their permission
The USA Today reported that this bill would effectively give Europeans the same protections as Americans under the Privacy Act of 1974 which governs the collection, use and dissemination of personally identifiable data contained in records held by the federal government. Europeans have been demanding the passage of the Judicial Redress Act as part of a deal that the Europeans are negotiating with the U.S. government that would allow American technology companies and online retailers to transfer Europeans' personal date to the U.S. The agreement will allow police authorities of the European countries and the U.S. to share electronic data to help catch criminals.
The SC Magazine noted that the measure was passed before the January 31 Safe Harbor deadline and on the 10th annual Data Privacy Day. Last October, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the EU-US Safe Harbor agreement invalid because of inadequate privacy protections. The U.S. House of Representatives had approved a version of the bill last October. However, the bill has only passed one hurdle in the U.S. Senate. The full Senate still has to approve the bill and a vote has not yet been set. The passage of the bill will is a key measure meant to convince the European Union to sign an Umbrella Agreement hammered out last September.
However, Forbes said that the Senate added an amendment to the House version of the Judicial Redress Act that may disrupt the turbulent US-EU negotiations on an agreement to replace the Safe Harbor Agreement. This amendment adds requirements that the U.S. Attorney General certify that the foreign country's "policies regarding the transfer of personal data for commercial purposes. . .do not materially impede the national security interests of the United States."
European countries have set a Jan. 31 deadline to reach an agreement, and have threatened to start imposing penalties against U.S. companies for any "illegal data transfers" starting in February. It is not clear if the bill will be approved by the Senate by the January 31 deadline.
