States Are Taking Privacy Into Their Own Hands
Tuesday, April 30th, 2019When people consider data protection officers and privacy regulators, they mostly think about foreign agencies who have made headlines with their battles to protect sensitive personal information from misuse or abuse, such as the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office or France’s Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL). In January, the CNIL fined Google 50 million euros “in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding the ads personalization.” And earlier this month, the ICO fined Bounty UK Limited 400,000 pounds because the pregnancy and parenting club “illegally shar[ed] personal information belonging to more than 14 million people.” Last year, the Hong Kong privacy commissioner launched an investigation into “the massive data breach at Cathay Pacific Airways that affected millions of its passengers.”
Although the data protection agencies can be restricted in their efforts in many ways, and there are questions about the adequacy of some of them, it is notable that these countries have a national agency to handle the privacy and security of sensitive personal data. They also have data protection officers at lower levels of government.
In the United States, there is no one information protection agency at the federal level. The responsibility is splintered, and the agencies’ power can be handicapped. Some of the agencies include the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission.
The PCLOB was recommended by the 9/11 Commission, and the board was created in 2004 and placed within the White House. In 2008, Congress passed and President Bush signed the “Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007,” which took the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board out of the White House and established it “as an independent agency within the executive branch.” Although it has been hobbled throughout its history by vacancies, it has released reports on the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone records surveillance program and a Section 702 of FISA surveillance program.
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