Three takeaways from FTC Commissioner Julie Brill’s speech Friday before the Amsterdam Privacy Conference, summarized in her Friday tweets: (1) the European Court of Justice’s “invalidation of Safe Harbor is a loss for transparency and FTC enforcement”; (2) the Schrems decision is an opportunity for a broad, honest, holistic discussion between the U.S. and the European Union on privacy; and (3) privacy discussions on technology need to integrate consumer, law enforcement and national security views. “We should recognize that important protections were lost through the Court’s invalidation of the European Commission’s decision in 2000 to approve safe harbor as a data transfer mechanism,” Brill said in her speech. “And they will continue to be lost if we do not have a durable and protective mechanism for information flow between the U.S. and Europe." Safe harbor’s transparency is unmatched by alternatives, Brill said: “We should create a new data transfer mechanism that strengthens the privacy protections that were in the safe harbor principles.” She said the safe harbor principles -- notice, choice, access, security, use restrictions and “other protections that one would expect from a baseline privacy regime” -- were “very expansive and protective.” Historically, privacy conversations in the U.S. have been largely siloed, Brill said. But as law enforcement asks for access to unencrypted versions of encrypted communications, the “debate has started to chip away at the silos,” Brill said. “Although I believe the U.S. consumer privacy framework is strong and multifaceted, I also believe the U.S. needs to go further with its consumer privacy laws to ensure that we are adequately protecting consumers with respect to these new technologies.” Brill said she supports additional privacy legislation, but she doesn’t believe such legislation is a “prerequisite for a post-Schrems data transfer mechanism.”
Ericsson plans to purchase the operations of software developer Ericpol in Poland and Ukraine, Ericsson said in a news release Thursday. Ericsson has concluded a preliminary share purchase agreement with Ericpol, it said, and approximately 2,000 of the developer's employees will join Ericsson upon completion of the acquisition. Pending regulatory approval, the transaction is expected to finalize during Q1 2016, Ericsson said.
The FTC and consumer protection agencies in 33 other countries that are part of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network released an updated version of the ICPEN econsumer.gov website Tuesday, a commission news release said. The site is designed to help law enforcement authorities “gather and share cross border consumer complaints that can be used to investigate and take action against international scams,” it said.
MasterCard and Tata Communications partnered to financially empower 25,000 women in developing countries by giving them connected digital financial tools, Tata said in a news release Wednesday. The initiative, announced by both companies at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, is part of a larger plan to reach 100 million women globally by 2020, said the release. The businesses, in coordination with a network of partners, will begin with pilot projects in India, Indonesia, Guatemala and Nigeria, said Tata.
Microsoft praised the U.S. State Department's Global Connect initiative, which seeks to connect 1.5 billion individuals across the globe to the Internet by 2020 (see 1509280046). In a company blog post Monday, Paul Mitchell, Microsoft tech policy senior director, called the new initiative an "ambitious effort" and "remarkable," especially against the backdrop of the U.N.'s newly announced sustainable development goals. Mitchell also said Microsoft plans to engage in the State Department's new program. "By working together as part of the Global Connect initiative, we can enable these benefits for those not yet connected," he said. Microsoft joins a bevy of industry groups and businesses that have vocalized support for Global Connect, with some observers calling it overly ambitious.
Sky has begun connecting its first customers to its new “ultrafast” fiber-to-the-home broadband network in York, U.K., the company said in a Monday announcement. Ultrafast customers will be able to receive broadband speeds of up to 940 Mbps, almost 500 times faster than Sky’s existing “service obligation,” making York the first U.K. city to test ultrafast broadband, it said. “The increased downloads speeds offered by ultrafast broadband mean that customers can download an HD movie in less than 30 seconds.” Sky is the U.K.’s first broadband service provider “to offer guaranteed broadband speeds,” said Lyssa McGowan, director of Sky Broadband, in a statement. “As Ofcom continues its review of the broadband market, we believe that trials like this are a valuable demonstration of the alternative technologies now available,” McGowan said of the U.K. regulator. “With the right conditions for investment and innovation, consumers and businesses could benefit from more ultrafast connections across the UK.”
The FCC proposal to remove filing requirements for imported devices is a “success story” within a multiagency effort to simplify international trade data filing within the U.S. government, said Cynthia Whittenburg, executive director, Trade Policy and Programs at Customs and Border Protection. Whittenburg mentioned the FCC proposal (see 1507210072) while speaking at a National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) conference Monday. The multiagency work, which is being overseen by CBP, included a request that the involved agencies review data filing requirements, and the FCC came to the conclusion that the device certification information of its Form 740 is no longer useful, she said. The FCC is still accepting comments on the proposal and the NCBFAA recently submitted comments in support of the NPRM, while asking for some language changes (see 1509240044).
The 2,580-mile Hibernia Express cable is the first trans-Atlantic cable built in more than a decade, Hibernia Networks said in a news release Thursday. The cable has undergone testing on its power stability, spectral efficiency and latency over the past few weeks, it said. The cable has an actual tested latency of better than 58.95 milliseconds from New York to London, it said.
The European Commission launched a public debate focused on geo-blocking and the role of platforms in the online economy, it said in a news release Thursday. The information gathered through the debate will aid the commission in assessing "the need for, or prepare initiatives as part of the Digital Single Market Strategy and the Internal Market Strategy for Goods and Services," the EC said. The debate on geo-blocking is designed to collect opinions on "unjustified commercial barriers which prevent from buying and selling products and services within the European Union," the commission said. The EC also said the consultation concerning online platforms, including search engines, social media, video sharing websites and others, will look at their economic role, explore the liability of intermediaries regarding illegal content hosted online, and discuss ways to improve the free flow of data in the EU and to build a "European Cloud." The debates will help the commission prepare legislative proposals in the first half of 2016 to "end unjustified geo-blocking" and could include targeted change to existing e-commerce rules, it said.
Negotiators from countries party to the Information Technology Agreement will convene in Geneva Monday to Oct. 2 to discuss duty reductions for the pact’s expansion rollout, dozens of industry associations said in a recent statement. The World Trade Organization says the duty reductions will begin in 2016 (see 1507280062), and the industry associations urged a speedy elimination schedule. “While the standard phase-out (or staging) period for tariff elimination under ITA expansion is three years, we urge the negotiators to show as much ambition as possible,” said the statement, which was endorsed by CEA, the Chamber of Commerce, DigitalEurope, the Entertainment Software Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as a range of software and semiconductor groups. “We urge all negotiating parties to show restraint in seeking staging periods longer than three years, given the short innovation cycles for high-technology products.” Each country must finalize its schedule by the December WTO ministerial in Nairobi, the statement said. In late July, the WTO said only 49 countries out of 81 total ITA parties had signed off on expansion, which was brokered in the days before.