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The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework is expected to withstand legal challenges and likely won’t face substantive changes as it reaches its one-year anniversary, a U.S. Commerce Department official said on Thursday.
Alex Greenstein was one of many privacy experts, consumer advocates, and technology industry representatives who spoke at Semafor’s event, Mapping the Future of Digital Privacy. The framework replaced the Privacy Shield program and provides a way for companies to transfer personal data from Europe to the U.S. so that it complies with EU laws.
While some disagreed over what rules would best protect data, they all agreed that Congress’ failure for years to pass federal privacy legislation has made the landscape more complex, as states have implemented their own, differing measures. Europe and other regions have also surged ahead.
“We would all like to see more harmonization and more convergence,” Bojana Bellamy, President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, said. “That might not be realistic at this time.”
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Meanwhile, privacy regulators are navigating the rapid acceleration of AI and how it could change the ways we think about what privacy really means.
“[For] things like sensitive personal data, new technologies are really challenging those definitions and regulators are starting to notice,” said Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. “When you think of health information or biometric data and things like that, some of that is driven by AI.”
In a discussion about the future of privacy, Penny Lee, CEO of the Financial Technology Association, noted that biometrics and other kinds of digital identifiers would become the norm.
“We are going into a digital identification world.” Lee said “I would argue that giving a full nine of your social security isn’t the most secure thing to do.”
