The Safe Harbour proposal is primarily intended to ensure that personal data on EU citizens will not be exported to US bodies unless the bodies conform to certain standards.
Although there are presently about 300 on-line privacy bills pending in the US, it does not seem likely that any legislation will be passed in the near future. Under the Safe Harbour agreement, US companies involved in the transfer of personal data from the EU would have to take measures to provide consumers with detailed notices of the way data is used and give the option not to have data disclosed.
However, concern has arisen over the lack of monitoring and investigation into Safe Harbour sites. The US Department of Commerce keeps a list of Safe Harbour sites and when complaints are made the Federal Trade Commission reviews them. However, the EU Committee’s report in June described these activities as “purely discretionary and, in practice, exercised only occasionally”.
Despite these criticisms, Ursula Pach of consumer rights group Bureau European des Unions de Consommateurs, which has also opposed the project commentated that, “in theory, the commission could not take into consideration what the Parliament said. But it’s more likely that they will make an effort to improve on what has been criticised – and that would mean renegotiating the agreement.”