Data protection in relation to transborder information sharing for network security and criminal justice purposes

Between November 2012 and September 2013, Joseph A. Cannataci responded to a brief commissioned by the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law of the Council of Europe. The initial work carried out to end December 2012 was subsequently revised and up-dated over the period Jan-Sep 2013 to reflect the impact of the developments over the European Commission’s Data Protection Reform Package (DPRP) and increasingly that of the revelations of the US whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The concept paper finds that the urgency for and the onus upon the CoE to take immediate action to produce a new binding instrument is compounded by the Snowden revelations and the possible chronic inadequacy of EU responses in the sphere of national security on account of exclusions of competence by Art 4 Section 2 of the EU Treaty.