Today, TACD and the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brussels European Union (HBS) have published research that examines how aspects of privacy and data protection are working for consumers in the EU and the US.

The research, which took place between September and October 2019, analysed three major global platforms: Amazon, Netflix and Spotify. It examined to what extent their customers based in the US receive a standard of privacy and data protection comparable to that of their EU customers.

The research was carried out through a mixture of mystery shopping, requests for access to personal data made by volunteers, and an analysis of existing EU and US legislation.

The findings show that key objectives of EU law, to ensure businesses are transparent and clear about their use of peoples’ data and that they meet and make it easy to exercise key rights, requires stronger oversight and enforcement of legal protections. The importance of consumer and privacy organisations encouraging enforcement by continuing investigations and taking cases to court was considered necessary.

In the US, the findings show that a baseline federal data protection and privacy law should be established that does not pre-empt stronger state law and protections and that creates an independent data protection agency.

The report Privacy in the EU and US: Consumer experiences across three global platforms can be found here.

See here for the EU press release and here for the US press release.

For any media enquiries, please contact:

• Alexandra Graziano, TACD Coordinator (agraziano@consint.org)