Tag: Data Transfer
2. June 2021
The European Data Protection Supervisor (“EDPS”) announced on May 27th, 2021, that it has opened an investigation into the use of Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS by EU institutions and has begun an audit of the European Commission’s use of Microsoft Office 365. The EDPS is the EU.s data protection authority.
The EDPS is the independent supervisory authority responsible for monitoring the processing of personal data by EU institutions and bodies.
Both investigations are a consequence of the Schrems II ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on June 16th, 2020 (please see our blog post). The CJEU ruled that U.S. its intense surveillance practices do not comply with the GDPR’s data protection standards. Accordingly, personal data of EU citizens may not be processed in the U.S. solely on the basis of the protection provided by so-called standard contractual clauses. Controllers, in cooperation with data importers, must examine and adapt additional measures on a case-by-case basis to ensure a level of data protection equivalent to the GDPR.
The investigations will examine whether EU institutions are complying with data protection rules and the Schrems II ruling.
Wojciech Wiewiórowski, EDPS head, is quoted in the EDPS announcement:
I am aware that the “Cloud II contracts” were signed in early 2020 before the “Schrems II” judgement and that both Amazon and Microsoft have announced new measures with the aim to align themselves with the judgement. Nevertheless, these announced measures may not be sufficient to ensure full compliance with EU data protection law and hence the need to investigate this properly.
If the EDPS finds that Cloud II contracts do not comply with the Schrems II ruling, this could force EU institutions to switch to alternative cloud providers based in the EU in the future, as the EDPS has stated that he wants EU institutions to lead by example.
7. May 2021
On May 7th, 2021, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, announced in a blogpost that Microsoft will enable its EU commercial and public sector customers to store all their data in the EU. Microsoft calls this policy “EU Data Boundary” and it will apply across all of Microsoft’s core business cloud services, such as Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365. Microsoft is the first big cloud provider to take such a step. The transition is intended to be done by the end of 2022.
This move can be seen as a reaction to the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) “Shrems II” ruling in June 2020 (please see our blogpost), in which the CJEU ruled that the “EU-US-Privacy Shield” does not provide sufficient protection and therefore invalidating the agreement. The “Privacy Shield” was a framework for regulating the transatlantic exchange of personal data for commercial purposes between the EU and the USA.
However, the CJEU has clarified that server location and standard contractual clauses alone are not sufficient to meet the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is because under U.S. law such as the “CLOUD Act”, U.S. law enforcement agencies have the power to compel U.S.-based technology companies to hand over requested data stored on servers, regardless of whether the data is stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil. So even with Microsoft’s proposed changes, U.S. authorities would still be able to access EU citizens’ personal data stored in the EU.
Microsoft believes it has found a way around the U.S. intelligence agencies: The U.S. intelligence agencies’ right of access could be technically worked around if customers effectively protected their data in the cloud themselves. To do this, customers would have to encrypt the data with a cryptographic key. In such a case, it would not be Microsoft that would manage the keys, but the customer themselves, and it would not be possible for Microsoft to hand over the keys to the US intelligence agencies. Microsoft also states that they are going above and beyond with their “Defending your Data” (please see our blogpost) measures to protect their customers’ data.
These measures by Microsoft are a step in the direction of a GDPR-compliant use of cloud applications, but whether they are sufficient to meet the high requirements of the GDPR may be doubted given the far-reaching powers of the US intelligence agencies. The reference to the possibility that users can encrypt their data themselves and keep the keys should help to comply with EU data protection standards, but must also be implemented in practice. Microsoft will have to educate its customers accordingly.
The GDPR-compliant transfer of personal data of EU citizens to the US remains uncertain territory, although further positive signals can be observed. For example, the new U.S. administration under President Joe Biden recently showed itself open to concluding a new comprehensive data protection agreement with the EU.
6. April 2021
On March 30th, 2021, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders and Chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission of the Republic of Korea Yoon Jong In announced the successful conclusion of adequacy talks between the EU und the Republic of Korea (“South Korea”). These adequacy discussions began in 2017, and there was already initially a high level of convergence between the EU and the Republic of Korea on data protection issues, which has been further enhanced by additional safeguards to further strengthen the level of protection in South Korea. Recently, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA”) took effect and the investigative and enforcement powers of South Korea’s data protection authority, the Personal Information Protection Commission (“PIPC”), were strengthened.
In the GDPR, this adequacy decision is based on Art. 45 GDPR. Article 45(3) GDPR empowers the EU Commission to adopt an implementing act to determine that a non-EU country ensures an “adequate level of protection”. This means a level of protection for personal data that is substantially equivalent to the level of protection within the EU. Once it has been determined that a non-EU country provides an “adequate level of protection”, transfers of personal data from the EU to that non-EU country can take place without further requirements. South Korea will be the 13th country to which personal data may be transferred on the basis of an adequacy decision. An adequacy decision covering both commercial providers and the public sector will enable free and secure data flows between the EU and the Republic of Korea and it will complement the EU-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement.
Until the free flow of data can occur, the EU Commission must initiate the procedure for adopting its adequacy finding. In this procedure, the European Data Protection Board will issue an opinion and a committee composed of representatives of the EU member states must agree. The EU Commission may then adopt the adequacy decision.
27. November 2020
The European Commission (“EC”) aims for an ecosystem of cheap, versatile, and secure EU-internal data transfers, so data transfers into non-EU-regions are less needed. For this goal, the EC proposed the “Data Governance Act” on November 25th, as a part of its “2020 European strategy for data“. These strategies are intended in order to open up new ways of sharing data that is collected by companies and the public sector, or freely shared by individuals, while increasing public trust in data sharing by implementing several measures, such as establishing “data sharing intermediaries”. Combined with the Gaia-X project and several measures to follow, the Data Governance Act sets the basis to create a domestic data market that offers more efficiency of data transfers to the businesses, while also ensuring that GDPR standards are preserved. Key industries in the focus of this agenda are the agricultural, environmental, energy, finance, healthcare and mobility sectors as well as public administration.
During her speech presenting the Data Governance Act, Margarethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, said that there are huge amounts of data produced every day, but not put to any productive use. As examples she names road traffic data from GPS, healthcare data that enables better and faster diagnosis, or data tracking heat usage from house sensors. The amount of data produced is only going to increase exponentially in the years to come. Vestager sees a lot of potential in this unused data and states the industry has an interest in using this data, however it lacks the tools to harness it.
EU based neutral data sharing intermediaries, who serve as safe data sharing organizers, are a key factor in this project. Their role is supposed to boost the willingness of sharing personal data whilst preserving the initial owner’s control. Therefore, intermediaries are not allowed to use the data for themselves, but function as neutral third-parties, transferring data between the data holder and the data user. Furthermore, intermediaries are to organize and combine different data in a neutral way, so no company secrets can be abused and the data is only used for the agreed purpose. Before they start operating, intermediates are required to notify the competent authority of their intention to provide data-sharing services.
New laws are going to ensure that sensitive and confidential data – such as intellectual property rights – can be shared and reused, while a legitimate level of protection is maintained. The same applies to data shared by individuals voluntarily. Individuals will be able to share personal data voluntarily in so-called “personal data spaces”. Once businesses will get access to these, they benefit from large amounts of data for low costs, no effort and on short notice. Vestager introduces the example of an individual suffering from a rare illness, who could provide data of his medical tests into such a personal data space, so businesses can use this data to work on treatments. Further examples are improvements in the management of climate change and the development of more precise farming tools.
To ensure the trust of potential participants, each EU-member-state is supposed to implement new competent authorities that are tasked with implementing and enforcing the Data Governance Act. A new EU-institution, the “European Data Innovation Board”, will be implemented and tasked with informing the EC about new data innovations and working out guidelines on how to implement these innovations into practice.
A more fluent exchange between different kinds of technical expertise is the hoped-for outcome of these changes, as a means to diminish the influence of big tech companies from the U.S. and China.
The Data Governance Act now needs to go through the regular legislative process. A timetable for when it is supposed to come into effect has not yet been set.
24. November 2020
Microsoft (“MS”) is among the first companies to react to the European Data Protection Board’s data transfer recommendations (please see our article), as the tech giant announced in a blog post on November 19th. MS calls these additional safeguards “Defending Your Data” and will immediately start implementing them in contracts with public sector and enterprise customers.
In light of the Schrems II ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on June 16th, the EDPB issued recommendations on how to transfer data into non-EEA countries in accordance with the GDPR on November 17th (please see our article). The recommendations lay out a six-step plan on how to assess whether a data transfer is up to GDPR standards or not. These steps include mapping all data transfer, assessing a third countries legislation, assessing the tool used for transferring data and adding supplementary measures to that tool. Among the latter is a list of technical, organizational, and contractual measures to be implemented to ensure the effectiveness of the tool.
Julie Brill, Corporate Vice President for Global Privacy and Regulatory Affairs and Chief Privacy Officer at Microsoft, issued the statement in which she declares MS to be the first company responding to the EDPB’s guidance. These safeguards include an obligation for MS to challenge all government requests for public sector or enterprise customer data, where it has a lawful basis for doing so; to try and redirect data requests; and to notify the customer promptly if legally allowed, about any data request by an authority, concerning that customer. This was one of the main ETDB recommendations and also included in a draft for new Standard Contractual Clauses published by the European Commission on November 12th. MS announces to monetary compensate customers, whose personal data has to be disclosed in response to government requests. These changes are additions to the SCC’s MS is using ever since Schrems II. Which include (as MS states) data encrypted to a high standard during transition and storage, transparency regarding government access requests to data (“U.S. National Security Orders Report” dating back to 2011; “Law Enforcement Requests Report“) .
Recently European authorities have been criticizing MS and especially its Microsoft 365 (“MS 365”) (formerly Office 365) tools for not being GDPR compliant. In July 2019 the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands issued a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), warning authorities not to use Office 365 ProPlus, Windows 10 Enterprise, as well as Office Online and Mobile, since they do not comply with GDPR standards. The European Data Protection Supervisor issued a warning in July 2020 stating that the use of MS 365 by EU authorities and contracts between EU institutions and MS do not comply with the GDPR. Also, the German Data Security Congress (“GDSC”) issued a statement in October, in which it declared MS 365 as not being compliant with the GDPR. The GDSC is a board made up of the regional data security authorities of all 16 german states and the national data security authority. This declaration was reached by a narrow vote of 9 to 8. Some of the 8 regional authorities later even issued a press release explaining why they voted against the declaration. They criticized a missing involvement and hearing of MS during the process, the GDSC’s use of MS’ Online Service Terms and Data Processing Addendum dating back to January 2020 and the declaration for being too undifferentiated.
Some of the German data protection authorities opposing the GDSC’s statement were quick in welcoming the new developments in a joint press release. Although, they stress that the main issues in data transfer from the EU to the U.S. still were not solved. Especially the CJEU main reserves regarding the mass monitoring of data streams by U.S. intelligence agencies (such as the NSA) are hard to prevent and make up for. Still, they announced the GDSC would resume its talks with MS before the end of 2020.
This quick reaction to the EDPB recommendations should bring some ease into the discussion surrounding MS’ GDPR compliance. It will most likely help MS case, especially with the German authorities, and might even lead to a prompt resolution in a conflict regarding tools that are omnipresent at workplaces all over the globe.
18. November 2020
A day after the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) issued its recommendations on supplementary measures, on November 12th the European Commission issued a draft on implementing new Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for data transfers to non-EU countries (third countries). The draft is open for feedback until December 10th, 2020, and includes a 12-month transition period during which companies are to implement the new SCCs. These SCCs are supposed to assist controllers and processors in transferring personal data from an EU-country to a third-country, implementing measures that guarantee GDPR-standards and regarding the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) “Schrems II” ruling.
The Annex includes modular clauses suitable for four different scenarios of data transfer. These scenarios are: (1) Controller-to-controller-transfer; (2) Controller-to-processor-transfer; (3) Processor-processor-transfer; (4) Processor-to-controller-transfer. Newly implemented in these SCCs are the latter two scenarios. Since the clauses in the Annex are modular, they can be mixed and matched into a contract fitting the situation at hand. Furthermore, more than two parties can adhere to the SCC and the modular approach even allows for additional parties to accede later on.
The potential of government access to personal data is distinctly addressed, since this was a main issue following the “Schrems II” ruling. Potential concerns are met by implementing clauses that address how the data importer must react when laws of the third country impinge on his ability to comply with the contract, especially the SCCs, and how he must react in case of government interference. Said measures include notifying the data exporter and the data subject of any government interference, such as legally binding requests of access to personal data, and, if possible, sharing further information on these requests on a regular basis, documenting them and challenging them legally. Termination clauses have been added, in case the data importer cannot comply further, e.g. because of changes in the third country’s law.
Further clauses regard matters such as data security, transparency, accuracy and onwards transfer of personal data, which represent issues that have all been tackled in the older SCCs, but are to be updated now.
17. November 2020
Following the recent judgment C-311/18 (Schrems II) by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published “Recommendations on measures that supplement transfer tools to ensure compliance with the EU level of protection of personal data” on November 11th. These measures are to be considered when assessing the transfer of personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), or so-called third countries. These recommendations are subject to public consultation until the end of November. Complementing these recommendations, the EDPB published “Recommendations on the European Essential Guarantees for surveillance measures”. Added together both recommendations are guidelines to assess sufficient measures to meet standards of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), even if data is transferred to a country lacking protection comparable to that of the GDPR.
The EDPB highlights a six steps plan to follow when checking whether a data transfer to a third country meets the standards set forth by the GDPR.
The first step is to map all transfers of personal data undertaken, especially transfers into a third country. The transferred data must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purpose. A major factor to consider is the storage of data in clouds. Furthermore, onwards transfer made by processors should be included. In a second step, the transfer tool used needs to be verified and matched to those listed in Chapter V of the GDPR. The third step is assessing if anything in the law or practice of the third country can impinge on the effectiveness of the safeguards of the transfer tool. The before mentioned Recommendations on European Essential Guarantees are supposed to help to evaluate a third countries laws, regarding the access of data by public authorities for the purpose of surveillance.
If the conclusion that follows the previous steps is that the third countries legislation impinges on the effectiveness of the Article 46 GDPR tool, the fourth step is identifying supplementary measures that are necessary to bring the level of protection of the data transfer up to EU Standards, or at least an equivalent, and adopting these. Recommendations for such measures are listed in Annex 2 of the EDPB Schrems II Recommendations. They may be of contractual, technical, or organizational nature. In Annex 2 the EDPB mentions seven technical cases they found and evaluates them. Five were deemed to be scenarios for which effective measures could be found. These are:
1. Data storage in a third country, that does not require access to the data in the clear.
2. Transfer of pseudonymized data.
3. Encrypted data merely transiting third countries.
4. Transfer of data to by law specially protected recipients.
5. Split or multi-party processing.
Maybe even more relevant are the two scenarios the EDPB found no effective measures for and therefore deemed to not be compliant with GDPR standards.:
6. Transfer of data in the clear (to cloud services or other processors)
7. Remote access (from third countries) to data in the clear, for business purposes, such as, for example, Human Resources.
These two scenarios are frequently used in practice. Still, the EDPB recommends not to execute these transfers in the upcoming future.
Examples of contractual measures are the obligation to implement necessary technical measures, measures regarding transparency of (requested) access by government authorities and measures to be taken against such requests. Accompanying this the European Commission published a draft regarding standard contractual clauses for transferring personal data to non-EU countries, as well as organizational measures such as internal policies and responsibilities regarding government interventions.
The last two steps are undertaking the formal procedural steps to adapt supplementary measures required and re-evaluating the former steps in appropriate intervals.
Even though these recommendations are not (yet) binding, companies should take a further look at the recommendations and check if their data transfers comply with the new situation.
18. November 2019
Websites, spezialized on health topics transfer information of website users to Google, Amazon and Facebook, as the Financial Times reports.
The transferred information are obtained through cookies and include medical symtoms and clinical pictures of the users.
Referring to the report of the Financial Times does the transfer take place without the express consent of the data subject, contrary to the Data Protection Law in the UK. Besides the legal obligations in the UK, the procedure of the website operators, using the cookie, contradicts also the legal requirements of the GDPR.
According to the requirements of the GDPR the processing of health data falls under Art. 9 GDPR and is a prohibition subject to permission, meaning, that the processing of health data is forbidden unless the data subject has given its explicit consent.
The report is also interesting considering the Cookie judgement of the CJEU (we reported). Based on the judgment, consent must be obtained for the use of each cookie.
Accordingly, the procedure of the website operators will (hopefully) change in order to comply with the new case law.
