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BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR
GOOGLE MOVES UK DATA TO THE US
Google is to take advantage of Brexit by moving the data and user accounts of its British users from the EU to the US, placing them outside the strong privacy protections offered by European regulators. Ireland, where Google and other US tech companies have their European headquarters, is staying in the EU. But it is understood that Google has decided to move its British users out of Irish jurisdiction because it is unclear whether Britain will follow UK GDPR or adopt other rules that could affect handling of user data. It’s suggested that if British Google users have their data kept in Ireland, it would be more difficult for British authorities to recover it in criminal investigations. Whereas the recent Cloud Act in the US is expected
to make it easier for British authorities to obtain data from US companies. But the US has among the weakest privacy protections of any major economy, with no broad law despite years of advocacy by consumer protection groups. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, warned, “moving people’s personal information to the US makes it easier for mass surveillance programmes to access it. There is nearly no privacy protection for non-US citizens. “The UK must commit to EU data protection standards or we are likely to see our rights being swiftly undermined by ‘anything goes’ US privacy practices.” While the British government has promised to form equivalent data
protections to GDPR, it is unclear what UK data protection will look like when it does finally leave the bloc, especially if it becomes part of a broader trade deal with the US. Lea Kissner, Google’s former lead for privacy technology, said she would have been surprised if the company had kept British accounts controlled in an EU country with the UK no longer a member. “There’s a bunch of noise about the UK government possibly trading away enough data protection to lose adequacy under GDPR, at which point having them in Google Ireland’s scope sounds messy,” Kissner said. “Never discount the desire of tech companies not to be caught in between two different governments.”
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