Why United States Should Adapt To European Data Protection Policy
For a long time, the United States has dwelled in the glory of being the pioneer when it comes to generation and storage of data. Bu t with the current changes as observed in big data, there more reasons why US should adopt the European data protection policy. First of all it’s the aspect of security in regard to citizen’s data in US whose seriousness has extensively deteriorated. Comparing the two current regimes for data access and regulations in European countries and that of United States, a lot of disparities have been noted. In UE, as far as databases for citizen information is concerned, the handling access to such information has always been guarded with a lot of secrecy (Danezis 234). On the side of United States, political parties and campaigns almost face no regulations in respect to access, collection and dissemination of citizen’s data especially for profiling practices in current political systems and have no any legal implications under US privacy law.
A live example for that case is the presidential elections which raise many questions as well as creating hot debates on how individual data was used unaware by the major candidates and political parties. Well, the history of data gathering in US is long but with the ever-growing vastness in the field of big data gathering in a modelled and targeted manner is new to its core and that has left a loophole as far as security of citizen’s data is concerned (Gutwirth, Serge, Ronald and Paul 78). Major parties and big data analytics companies can freely collect and accumulate massive data from the citizens in United States to be used for different purposes like election campaigns and the main sources of this data are the local, state and federal records. This poses a big threat to data security and therefore going the EU way will be a wise decision. Statistics have indicated that Europe has more comprehensive data protection systems and legislations than US. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Some types of data are very sensitive to be exposed to the public domain. Such types of data include but not limited to medical information and banking and their leakage may lead to huge damages. From the discussion above, it comes out clearly that security of citizen’s data in the United States has largely deteriorated and that raises a lot of doubts on how secure are the medical information and banking details? Which are the top most sensitive information for any citizen. In UE, as far as databases for citizen information are concerned, the handling and access to such information has always been guarded with a lot of secrecy and that is good reason for US to adopt the European data protection policy if at all it wants to protect the sensitive information of its citizens (Koops 250).
Statistics have indicated that there are a number of sources which have been used before by the political parties to get citizen’s information for campaign purposes and among those sources is the medical databases from the major hospitals. This has raised controversy as the proponents argue that the information is used purposely for campaigns (Martin, Yod and Antonio 123). Well, it can be approached in that direction but who knows how many people might be interested with the records after the campaigns? The main solution to this problem would therefore be a zero tolerance to citizen information unless under controlled circumstances and that is what the European data protection policy has advocated.
The European data protection policy user agreements have been outlined in a short and easy ways to enable people read and understand for themselves compared to the US version which has long and boring user agreements (Stucke, Maurice and Allen 564). Nobody wishes to go through long statements in the name of user agreements because in most cases where these agreements are to be signed, the users are under critical conditions. For instance, a woman getting it a maternity will definitely overlook long user agreements because of pressure and anxiety and end up committing herself to some agreements which may cost him in future. The good news is that European data protection has taken care of that by modifying the user agreements into short and understandable manner. The United States should therefore consider going the European way to avoid bias as far as user agreements are concerned.
In some segments of the US data protection policy, the user agreements have been expressed in high legal terms to an extent that for non-lawmakers it’s hard to comprehend. Considering the fact that not all people understand legal terms, this exposes many citizens to biasness when it comes to signing those agreements and most of them end up agreeing to what they understand not (Sherraden, Michael and Neil 87). So, going the EU way, the level of user bias will be minimal because user agreement decisions will be made out of understanding the facts and not because of the complexity of the matter. That way, citizens will be sensitive in committing themselves anyhow to sharing of their personal information like medical records and banking details which have been targeted by malicious people in most cases.
Lastly, the United States should consider adopting the European data protection policy because it will enable its citizens have control over what segments of their personal data can be shared unlike its approach where the citizens don’t even know anything about their personal data that is being shared. This will be achieved through various ways; for instance, some of the user agreements in the US policy have been outlined in a lengthy and technical manner for normal citizens to be able to comprehend easily without the help of a law maker. This makes most of them to just commit themselves unknowingly to some agreements which may haunt them in future as far as security and privacy of their sensitive information is concerned (Koops 250).
Considering the EU data protection policy version on the other hand, the user agreements have been simplified to make them understandable for the users. The users are able to commit themselves into agreements they very well understand. Therefore, they are in a position to avoid committing themselves into some of the agreements which violate the privacy of their sensitive data like medical records and other records which may be used to reveal their banking details (Sherraden, Michael and Neil 87). Cases of violation of individual privacy as a result will decline because the decisions governing data protection will be largely under the control of the owner.
Conclusively, from the discussion it’s clear that the European data protection policy has more advantages which stand out above the United States version and in consideration to the fact that any policy aims at serving the users in the best way possible, US should consider moving the EU way and which will enable its citizens enjoy ultimate security for their data, protection of their sensitive information like medical and banking details, wise decisions as far as user agreement commitments are concerned and control over private data sharing.
Work cited
Danezis, George, et al. “Privacy and Data Protection by Design-from policy to engineering.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.03726 (2015).
Gutwirth, Serge, Ronald Leenes, and Paul De Hert, eds. Reforming European data protection law. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015.
Koops, Bert-Jaap. “The trouble with European data protection law.” International Data Privacy Law 4.4 (2014): 250-261.
Martin, Yod-Samuel, and Antonio Kung. “Methods and Tools for GDPR Compliance Through Privacy and Data Protection Engineering.” 2018 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW). IEEE, 2018.
Stucke, Maurice E., and Allen P. Grunes. Big data and competition policy. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Sherraden, Michael, and Neil Gilbert. Assets and the poor: new American welfare policy. Routledge, 2016.