U.S. President Joe Biden has signed an executive order for a new data privacy framework for personal information sharing between the U.S. and Europe after a prior version was discarded by a European court in 2020 due to the U.S.'s excessive surveillance powers, reports CNBC.
Under the executive order, the U.S. intelligence community has been ordered to implement policy and procedure updates to adhere to new privacy protections, while the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been directed to evaluate such updates. Meanwhile, EU-based individuals will be permitted to seek redress via an independent Data Protection Review Court, with an Office of the Director of National Intelligence civil liberties protection officer tasked to perform an initial complaint investigation. "The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework includes robust commitment to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence, which will ensure the privacy of EU personal data," said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. While the measure has gained the praise of U.S. tech firms and industry groups as an effort that would ease cross-border data flows, consumer and data privacy watchdogs have criticized inadequate data protections laid out in the framework.
