Freedom of Information versus National Sovereignty: The Need for a New Global Forum for the Resolution of Transborder Date Flow Problems

This Note argues that the issues raised by transborder data flow restrictions must be dealt with on a global scale, not on a national basis. Part I of this Note discusses the international legal principles underlying the concept of freedom of information and the legal difficulties presented by the imposition of transborder data flow restrictions. Part II analyzes the perception among developing nations that sovereign rights are threatened by an unrestricted flow of information and discusses the measures developing nations are implementing to control this perceived threat. Part III analyzes several approaches suggested for dealing with the problems of transborder data flow restrictions and argues that a new international forum must be created to constructively address the legitimate concerns of the developing nations. This Note concludes that since the effective demise of Unesco, progress must be made toward creating a viable international forum to address the multilateral concerns over transborder data flow restrictions

The Critical Challenges from International High-Tech and Computer-Related Crime at the Millennium

The automotive industry stands in front of a great challenge, to decrease its impact on the environment. One important part in succeeding with this is to decrease the structural weight of the body structure and by that the fuel consumption or the required battery power. Carbon fibre composites are by many seen as the only real option when traditional engineering materials are running out of potential for further weight reduction. However, the automotive industry lacks experience working with structural composites and the methods for high volume composite manufacturing are immature. The development of a composite automotive body structure, therefore, needs methods to support and guide the conceptual work to improve the financial and technical results. In this thesis a framework is presented which will provide guidelines for the conceptual phase of the development of an automotive body structure. The framework follows two main paths, one to strive for the ideal material diversity, which also defines an initial partition of the body structure based on the process and material selection. Secondly, a further analysis of the structures are made to evaluate if a more cost and weight efficient solution can be found by a more differential design and by that define the ideal part size. In the case and parameter studies performed, different carbon fibre composite material systems and processes are compared and evaluated. The results show that high performance material system with continuous fibres becomes both more cost and performance effective compared to industrialised discontinuous fibre composites. But also that cycle times, sometimes, are less important than a competitive feedstock cost for a manufacturing process. When further analysing the manufacturing design of the structures it is seen that further partition(s) can become cost effective if the size and complexity is large enough.      QC 20140527</p

Privacy self-regulation and the changing role of the state: from public law to social and technical mechanisms of governance

This paper provides a structured overview of different self-governance mechanisms for privacy and data protection in the corporate world, with a special focus on Internet privacy. It also looks at the role of the state, and how it has related to privacy self-governance over time. While early data protection started out as law-based regulation by nation-states, transnational self-governance mechanisms have become more important due to the rise of global telecommunications and the Internet. Reach, scope, precision and enforcement of these industry codes of conduct vary a lot. The more binding they are, the more limited is their reach, though they - like the state-based instruments for privacy protection - are becoming more harmonised and global in reach nowadays. These social codes of conduct are developed by the private sector with limited participation of official data protection commissioners, public interest groups, or international organisations. Software tools - technical codes - for online privacy protection can give back some control over their data to individual users and customers, but only have limited reach and applications. The privacy-enhancing design of network infrastructures and database architectures is still mainly developed autonomously by the computer and software industry. Here, we can recently find a stronger, but new role of the state. Instead of regulating data processors directly, governments and oversight agencies now focus more on the intermediaries - standards developers, large software companies, or industry associations. And instead of prescribing and penalising, they now rely more on incentive-structures like certifications or public funding for social and technical self-governance instruments of privacy protection. The use of technology as an instrument and object of regulation is thereby becoming more popular, but the success of this approach still depends on the social codes and the underlying norms which technology is supposed to embed. --

Setting Standards for Fair Information Practice in the U.S. Private Sector

The confluence of plans for an Information Superhighway, actual industry self-regulatory practices, and international pressure dictate renewed consideration of standard setting for fair information practices in the U.S. private sector. The legal rules, industry norms, and business practices that regulate the treatment of personal information in the United States are organized in a wide and dispersed manner. This Article analyzes how these standards are established in the U.S. private sector. Part I argues that the U.S. standards derive from the influence of American political philosophy on legal rule making and a preference for dispersed sources of information standards. Part II examines the aggregation of legal rules, industry norms, and business practice from these various decentralized sources. Part III ties the deficiencies back to the underlying U.S. philosophy and argues that the adherence to targeted standards has frustrated the very purposes of the narrow, ad hoc regulatory approach to setting private sector standards. Part IV addresses the irony that European pressure should force the United States to revisit the setting of standards for the private sector

E-Commerce and Trans-Atlantic Privacy

For almost a decade, the United States and Europe have anticipated a clash over the protection of personal information. Between the implementation in Europe of comprehensive legal protections pursuant to the directive on data protection and the continued reliance on industry self-regulation in the United States, trans-Atlantic privacy policies have been at odds with each other. The rapid growth in e-commerce is now sparking the long-anticipated trans-Atlantic privacy clash. This Article will first look at the context of American e-commerce and the disjuncture between citizens\u27 privacy and business practices. The Article will then turn to the international context and explore the adverse impact, on the status quo in the United States, of European data protection law as harmonized by Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 Oct. 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Following this analysis, the Article will show that the “safe harbor” agreement between the United States Department of Commerce and the European Commission--designed to alleviate the threat of disruption in trans-Atlantic data flows and, in particular, to mollify concerns for the stability of online data transfers--is only a weak, seriously flawed solution for e-commerce. In the end, extra-legal technical measures and contractual mechanisms might minimize privacy conflicts for e-commerce transactions, but an international treaty is likely the only sustainable solution for long-term growth in trans-border commercial interchange

Towards an Administration without Frontiers. An analysis on the instruments and mechanisms of cooperation in the field of migration from Romanian view

As a consequence of Romania’s accession to the European Union, a better organization of the public administration was necessary, in order to cope with the new challenges. Thus, Romania, as a country at the external border of the Union, entered a new period which implies the efficient security of the external borders, migration control, as well as preparing and adopting the necessary measures for the elimination of the internal border controls (for the purpose of subsequently joining the Schengen space). All these considerations called for a closer cooperation between the competent authorities in the field and the reform of the system in order to meet the requirements. Romania, with regard to exercising its competencies on the population, is placed in a double position: State of origin and State of receipt. The State’s prerogative to establish the legal regime applicable to the persons under its jurisdiction, is considered exclusive and discretionary, but must take into account two important postulates: the regime of its citizens must not bring irreversible damage to the fundamental human rights, and the regime of aliens must not prejudice their interests or the interests of their States of origin.(F. Vogin)migration, control, procedure, refugees, expulsion, extradition, visa

Transborder Data Flow: Separating the Privacy Interests of Individuals and Corporations

The merger of computer and communications technologies in the past two decades has revolutionized information processing throughout the world. The most recent telecommunications advances possible direct international transfers of sensitive personal data via computer-satellite links. Computerized data bases containing commercial information identifying citizens of one country are now routinely transferred to and stored in another, often without the knowledge of the individuals identified in the data. Numerous European countries have enacted data protection legislation with the avowed intent to protect their citizens from the improper use of personal information that is transferred extranationally. These data protection laws prohibit the export of such information under certain specified conditions