Security News > 2020 > September > Swiss Official Airs Concerns About Data Privacy in US
A Swiss federal commissioner announced Tuesday that a U.S.-Swiss program aimed to protect personal information exchanged between the two countries doesn't go far enough, and has downgraded the United States to rank it as a country deemed to have inadequate data protection.
Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger, in a new policy paper, recommends that Swiss companies or government should disclose personal data to the U.S. only if safeguards are put in place to protect people from prying U.S. authorities.
Lobsiger's paper follows a regular review of the three-year-old U.S.-Swiss program known as Privacy Shield, and his recommendations follow similar concerns expressed by EU authorities about an alleged lack of privacy protections in the United States.
In July, the EU's top court ruled that the bloc's own Privacy Shield program with the U.S. was invalid because the American government can snoop on people's data.
The "Privacy Shield" program focuses on data exchange between businesses and guarantees provided by U.S. authorities on protecting personal data transferred between the countries, notably involving "The mass collection of non-US citizens' data for the purposes of anti-terrorism measures and national security," the paper said.