Safe harbor and privacy protection: a looming issue for IT professionals

Author

Markel, Mike

Author_Institution

Dept. of English, Boise State Univ., ID, USA

Volume

49

Issue

1

fYear

2006

fDate

3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

11

Abstract

The 25 European Union (EU) Member States require that their residents´ personal information not be transferred to countries that do not protect that information adequately. In 2000, the EU ruled that the United States (US), through its voluntary Safe Harbor program, met that requirement. Since that time, however, the EU has charged that many US companies that claim to be in compliance with Safe Harbor policies are not. In this article, I report on a study of the privacy-policy statements of 20 randomly selected US companies that claim to be in compliance. Of the 20, 19 are not in compliance. This study argues that as EU Member States begin to examine Safe Harbor carefully, they are likely to force US companies to adhere to more stringent privacy policies. The burden of this adherence will be borne by US IT professionals.

Keywords

data privacy; international trade; legislation; professional aspects; Department of Commerce; European Commission; European Union Member States; IT professionals; Safe Harbor program; US companies; data privacy; data protection; information technology; international trade; privacy-policy statements; Companies; Computer hacking; Data privacy; Databases; Guidelines; Information technology; International trade; Law; Protection; US Department of Commerce; Data privacy; Department of Commerce; European Commission; Safe Harbor; data protection; information technology (IT); international trade;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0361-1434

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPC.2006.870462

Filename

1599550