‘Only EU can take a stand on privacy’

Jan Philipp Albrecht is the European parliamentary politician most closely identified with the politics of the digital era. At a time when data privacy and data surveillance are regularly in the headlines, the German Green Party MEP is the person most sought out by international media for comment on EU policy debates, legislative proposals and court decisions in this area.

Not that he feels he understands the full significance of a world increasingly dominated by the internet and computer-managed information, despite his degrees in ICT law and his role as rapporteur for the European Parliament on its proposed data-protection regulation.

“We are all on a learning curve. The whole of society is in the process of realising the huge changes digitisation brings,” he says.

The legislative debate about data retention and protection in 2005/2006, when he was an intern with the parliament, solidified his interest in the issue, he says. The 2006 data-retention directive (recently overturned by the European Court of Justice in the wake of an Irish and Austrian challenge) had just come into force. “That was the moment I was motivated to get active politically.”

He also credits his relative youth. Elected in his mid-20s, Albrecht is now 31 years old, making him one of the few MEPs young enough to have grown up with the internet. “I think it makes a difference; for sure it makes a difference.”

Understanding some of the implications of certain technologies is easier when you’ve grown up with technology all around you, he says. He was also among the first wave of lawyers trained specifically in such areas. “Now, the whole question of how we combine legal issues with technical issues has become so important. There is a need for people who can understand and explain the technology environment in which we live,” he says, mentioning the challenge of legislating for algorithms.

There’s a much greater realisation within the European Parliament of the need for better rules for the management of digital data, with a wide range of debate, he says, pointing to detailed discussion on the implications of cloud computing.

He was among the first MEPs to publicly welcome the decision two weeks ago to throw out the data retention directive, which allowed governments to require communications companies to retain data about citizens' phone calls and internet use for up to two years. The case was largely based on a challenge by Digital Rights Ireland on the constitutionality of Irish legislation. "The ECJ could no longer stand aside when it comes to fundamental rights."

The overall decision didn’t surprise him, but he was pleased with its firm wording. “It is very clear in saying there’s no case for blanket data retention done without [the basis of] suspicion or risk. It means data retention is dead, after this result. I don’t think there’s any space for a new directive on the same basis. It was a landmark case.”

His focus is on the new data protection regulation, proposed in early 2012 to replace the outdated 1995 directive, put in place before most European homes even had internet access. At its heart is an attempt to harmonise data-protection law across member states, and as such it has divided interests from national governments to privacy advocates, multinationals to SMEs, content creators to intellectual-property owners. But last month the parliament voted to support the current draft, and Albrecht says he is confident it will be passed by early 2015.

He says privacy and civil rights activists would prefer even stronger protection provisions in the proposed regulation. “I would like to even go further when it comes to the revealing of personal data,” he says, citing whistleblower Edward Snowden, who “has shown there is still a huge need for protection”.

He says he gets letters "again and again from leading civil rights groups in America, in South America, all over the world. They write to us more or less unanimous that the only one to take a stand on digital privacy can be Europe. It's the only place with such an advanced debate and the only place where governments have the strength to do it," he says. "If we don't use this opportunity, we will regret it."

Jan Philipp Albrecht will give a public talk, which will be which will be live-streamed, today at TCube in Dublin at 6pm; tcubedublin.com