Merkel Urges Europe to Tighten Internet Safeguards
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is calling for the European Union to adopt legislation requiring Internet companies to disclose what information about users they store and to whom they provide it. Ms. Merkel’s remarks, in a television interview on Sunday night, reflected the anger throughout much of Europe, including Germany, over recent accounts of government surveillance by the United States National Security Agency. Those accounts, in government documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, included the agency’s compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype. Those companies have already begun aggressive lobbying campaigns to stop or dilute tighter privacy rules, which they say would interfere with their business models and decrease profits and growth. The companies’ efforts are, in turn, supported by countries like England and Ireland that fear that such restrictions would hamper economic recovery. Unlike many citizens in the United States, whose desire to prevent the kind of widespread terrorist attacks like those of Sept. 11, 2001, often trumps their concerns about privacy rights and government surveillance, Germans have experienced the corruption of those rights under the Nazis and later the Communist government of East Germany, making them far more sensitive to the issue. Until now, though, Germany has been slow to back an aggressive privacy initiative across Europe partly because the country’s laws are among the tightest in the bloc. Ms. Merkel said she now believed that only a broader pact could be effective. “That has to be part of such a data privacy agreement because we have great regulation for Germany, but if Facebook is registered in Ireland, then it falls under Irish jurisdiction,” she said. “Consequently we need a common European agreement.” Human rights groups in Germany and Austria, which has similarly strict rules guarding private information, have taken on the Internet giants over Facebook’s default settings on sharing personal data and Google’s scooping up of private information while mapping out German cities for its Street View service. “What actually happens with data when they leave Germany to servers outside of the country, or Europe, where they fall under the jurisdiction of completely different regulations?” Ms. Merkel asked in the interview on Sunday with the public broadcast network ARD. She pointed out that existing international accords on privacy protection were drawn up decades before the digital era, and she said she would meet in the coming days with her interior and justice ministers to draw up proposed regulations on data privacy that could apply across the entire 28-nation bloc. Companies contacted by e-mail, including Google and Microsoft, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Ms. Merkel’s remarks. “We’re still investigating what she said, and in what context she said it,” said Lisa Randles, a spokeswoman for BSA, an alliance of software companies, including Apple and Microsoft The European Union’s justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, who originally proposed rules overhauling and updating the bloc’s privacy standards in early 2012, praised “this commitment of Chancellor Merkel to strong and uniform E.U. data protection rules” in a statement on Monday in Brussels. The N.S.A. revelations have placed an added political strain on Ms. Merkel, who polls suggest remains in a strong position before German elections in September but who is under increasing attack from opposition parties trying to use the matter to undercut her popularity. “The question is whether this is part of election campaign tactics or something with real substance,” Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German member of the European Parliament who is the main sponsor of the legislation, said in a telephone interview on Monday. The legislation needs the Parliament’s approval to take effect. Opposition parties have accused Ms. Merkel’s government of being too deferential to the United States over the issues of data privacy and government surveillance, and of allowing German intelligence agencies to be complicit in the American programs. Peer Steinbrück, the chancellor’s main rival in the elections, said in an interview published Sunday in the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that she had broken her oath of office by failing in her duties to protect the German people, including their personal data. “As chancellor, Ms. Merkel swore to prevent harm to the German people,” Mr. Steinbrück said. In Brussels, Ms. Reding, the bloc’s justice commissioner, suggested that the first real opportunity for countries like Germany to push forward on any proposed legislation would be in October, at a summit meeting in Brussels, where the bloc’s leaders should “address this matter and speed up the work.” Ms. Reding said the goal should be to reach an agreement at the European Union level by next spring, before elections for the European Parliament. But Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, warned last month that the bloc’s efforts could be stalled by “exceptional” lobbying by Internet companies and by countries opposed to stronger data privacy rules. At their meeting last month, ministers began introducing more business-friendly elements into the proposals, including allowing regulators to scrutinize how companies use personal data only in cases of risks to individuals, including identity theft or discrimination. The ministers debated a proposal that would allow companies to obtain “unambiguous” consent, which is considered a lower legal threshold than the “explicit” consent now required from users whose personal data they collect and process. Mr. Albrecht, the German European Parliament member, said the public outcry over surveillance by government and major Internet companies had already made lobbying in Europe harder for the technology industry. “Companies cannot just say, ‘We don’t have anything to do with surveillance or misuse of data,’ because in fact they are at the core of it,” Mr. Albrecht said. “So if they engage in calling for less strict standards, they will lose trust in their services.” <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Melissa Eddy reported from Paris, and James Kanter from Brussels. |