Data Protection & the EU

As part of the legal domain on the CISSP course I discussed with the class yesterday about the Data Protection requirements and how the EU data protection maps closely with the OCED data privacy requirements. We also discussed the situation over the transferring data to the US from the EU and the need for organisations in the US to sign up for and stay signatures of the Department of Commerce Safe Harbour agreement and whether the US Patriots act trumps the safe harbour agreement and EU companies should consider whether it is prudent to transfer PII to the US under the safe harbour if the government can read the data.

Today I find two interesting articles about this

• The Dutch, the Yanks, the Cloud and YOU
• EU urged to choose transatlantic convergence on data protection

Neither are giving a nice rosy feeling that there is a solution to the problem or there will be one in the near future.