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Tag ‘data protection’

Cloud computing: building a European cloud partnership

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Last week I was in Davos at the World Economic Forum. A chance to speak with many interesting people and gain a lot of real insight about trends in the wider world.

You can read my impressions from some of those meetings elsewhere on this blog .

But a principal reason for being there was to announce an exciting new initiative on cloud computing – the European Cloud Partnership. An important step forward to making the EU not just cloud friendly, but cloud-active. Here’s my announcement in detail:

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Blogging from Davos – Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook

Friday, January 27th, 2012

I "friend" Sheryl

While at the World Economic Forum in Davos this morning, I had an important discussion with Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook; we talked about protecting children, and new data protection rules.

One of my priorities under the Digital Agenda is to ensure that children use new technologies in the safest way possible to learn, play, communicate and be creative. Facebook is already one of the parties to the EU’s Safer Social Networking Principles. But keeping children safe online is a shared responsibility, for all sectoral players, wherever they lie along the value chain – they all have a role to play, depending on how their devices or services engage with children as users. Read the full entry

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I’ll be Tweet-chatting next Monday, 30 January

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

I’m really positive about how the Internet helps – not just one-way communication – but genuine interaction. So I am happy to announce that I will have another tweetchat on Monday 30 January, 3pm to 3.30pm (Brussels time). Anyone can join in. This is an opportunity for you to send in comments or questions on my recent announcement on cloud computing, on privacy online, and on the Commission’s recent proposal to revise data protection rules across Europe (on which my blog is here).

This is why I would like to get your questions and comments on these issues – and of course others. Just send me a tweet from any time now – using the #askneelie hashtag – and I’ll do my best to respond on Monday. I look forward to a great live-chat with all of you!

[Update 2 Feb: results of the tweetchat available in HTML, .ods or Excel format; or see the follow -up blog]

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Cloud Computing and Data protection reform

Friday, January 13th, 2012
Data protection rules have big impacts on cloud computing

Credit kexino.com, creative commons license

One of the big topics as we head into 2012 is definitely protection of personal data. The Commission will propose a reform of the current 15-year-old framework in a few weeks. The main issues were already clearly flagged in the Commission communication just over a year ago. My colleague Viviane Reding has spoken about this already a lot in the past few months, setting out her thinking on a number of concrete elements that will be put forward, such as harmonising and better enforcing rules across the EU. From the Digital Agenda perspective, I’m working very closely with Viviane on this, for two reasons:

First, because data protection is an important part of wider cloud computing issues. After 12 months of intensive discussions and consultations, I am currently preparing the first in a series of concrete announcements related to the European Cloud Computing Strategy. I want Europe to be not only cloud-friendly but cloud-active: the right common rules could enhance cloud development, but the wrong choices on data protection would cut off lots of potential uses and business offerings before they’ve even started. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, I will announce a concrete project aimed at making it easier for buyers – particularly public sector buyers – to cooperate on requirement definitions and possibly pool their resources when procuring Cloud Computing services.

And second because there’s more to data protection than cloud computing (and vice versa) since data protection is relevant to almost all digital activity. In particular when we use the Internet, almost anywhere we go, we leave data traces behind. And we are all of us rightly concerned with the question of what companies, and governments, do with this personal data.

When it comes to individual privacy in the digital age, my view is clear: I want to see the principles of transparency, fairness and user control running through everything. Transparency so that citizens know exactly what the deal is. Fairness so that citizens are not forced into sharing their data. And user control so that citizens can decide – in a simple, informed and effective manner – what they allow others to know. And all of this should be combined with better regulation principles, imposing only the minimum legal and administrative burdens needed to achieve these goals.

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We’re helping to make a safer internet – but it’s a shared responsibility!

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Anyone can be affected by security issues on the internet. It sounds like a boring cliché, but it is true. I recently I found out about someone attempting to impersonate me and my work at the Commission – using fake webmail and other tactics. My advice is to check how your name is being used online! Not only that – be sure you know who you are communicating with. Most of us like to share personal information online, but we rarely think about how embarrassing – or worse! – it could be if that information was forwarded or simply available to the wrong people. That is the thinking behind the theme of this year’s Safer Internet Day:  “it’s more than a game – it’s your life.” (see the video above from the recent Data Protection Day which highlights this exact point) 

These messages take on an even greater importance when you think about the massive numbers of children who are now online.  Yes, I really want to get every European digital, but it should happen in the safest way possible. More and more kids are going online – millions each year. So when your kids turn 6 or 7, it’s time for you to start thinking about how to talk to them about the internet. An organisation called Child Focus (I visited them this morning) recommends mentioning the internet three times a week in conversation.

We can’t lock up the internet or stop children from starting their 2.0 life, especially if all their friends are going online. But we can do a lot to educate and protect them. I am thinking about situations such as when you can’t monitor their internet use. Already 26% of 9-10 year olds have an account on a social network, in the older age brackets it is up to 80% in some countries. We also know that a third of kids go online via their mobiles, and around half get online in the privacy of their bedrooms. We even know that they are sleeping 2 to 3 hours less per night than 10 years ago. In others words, it is clear that there is a lot of unsupervised internet access!

So, don’t be put off this topic if you don’t feel you are an expert – we simply all have to learn a bit more. See my speech on how we can do it here: SPEECH/11/73. For example when a child opens an account on a social network they should get high privacy settings by default. Read the full entry

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