ICO leading call for new data protection laws
- Added:
- Jul 07, 2008
The UK privacy watchdog is spearheading a debate on the future of European privacy Law.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is to lead an international debate about the future direction of data protection law in Europe. The ICO – the UK’s privacy watchdog – has announced that RAND Europe has been commissioned to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of European Data Protection law and to identify promising avenues for reform.
The ICO has commissioned the research amid growing fears that the current European Directive is no longer fit for purpose. The UK watchdog believes that European Data Protection law needs to be modernised to meet the technological and social challenges of the 21st century. The research will consider how consumers’ rights can be enhanced in a rapidly evolving information society and will provide EU bodies, national governments and the data protection community with proposals for improving regulatory approaches to protecting privacy and personal information.
Speaking at Privacy Laws and Business annual conference in Cambridge, Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner, said: “We want to generate new thinking. European data protection law is increasingly seen as out of date, bureaucratic and excessively prescriptive. It is showing its age and is failing to meet new challenges to privacy, such as the transfer of personal details across international borders and the huge growth in personal information online. It is high time the law is reviewed and updated for the modern world. This research will help identify ways we can make the law more straightforward and more effective in practice, but less burdensome for organisations.
He continued, “We are pleased that the European Commission has recently announced a study of its own and we expect our research to complement and strengthen the overall impetus for reform. I also very much hope that the UK government will demonstrate leadership by engaging constructively in these reviews and supporting better regulation and practical approaches to international data protection.”
RAND Europe, with its partners time.lex and GNKS-Consult, won the ICO’scompetitive tender to carry out the analysis against 19 other bids. The study will be made publicly available in Spring 2009.