European Privacy Regulators Now Not Happy With US #PrivacyShield

It all seemed to be going so smoothly for US policy-makers when the gathering of the EU's privacy regulators (the Article 29 Working Party) issued a draft review of the US Privacy Shield in February. But the final report means the champagne will remain in the bottle for sometime yet.

Basically, the regulators found the Privacy Sword Shield is hard to read, unclear, inconsistently worded, inconsistent with the new General Data Protection Regulation, does not provide equivalent protection, makes it too hard for foreigners to get redress, the proposed Ombudsman will be neither independent nor adequately resourced; and does "not exclude massive and indiscriminate collection of personal data originating from the EU"!

Meanwhile, data transfers from the EU to the US are still okay to take place under the existing data transfer mechanisms ('standard model clauses' and 'Binding Corporate Rules').

Pity Mr Schrems who managed to overturn the 'Safe Harbor' but leave us even less protected than before!

Video Did Not Kill The Radio Star

So many highlights from the past few days at the SCL's Technology Law Futures Conference on 'Keeping Humans at the Heart of Technology', available online soon, but a favourite quote is that "video did not kill the radio star" (with apologies to the Buggles). 

A more fulsome report will no doubt be available shortly. In the meantime, we should all be thinking about the responsible development of 'artificial narrow intelligence' in the context of social care, driver-less cars and other autonomous vehicles (not to mention surveillance and warfare, to the extent we can influence that!). 

If we can insist on adequate transparency and appropriate rules governing risk and liability in the context of these types of projects, then maybe we'll be in good shape to deal with 'artificial general intelligence' when that comes, as well as the potential for artificial superintelligence beyond... [drum roll]... The Singularity.  

Or we could simply fade away as the machines take over.

It's up to us.

For now.