Charles Prescott wrote:
"Iit seems clear to me that the Article 29 paper on assessing adequacy
>issued in 1998 was poorly researched (and perhaps not researched at all), and
>progressed from presumptions and biases in favor of the more "statist" role of
>government prevalent in Europe. For example, they made no study or our common
>law doctrines on privacy, our legal system, or the ease of access to that
>system
>by individuals, and in fact make gross errors of legal interpretation and
>build
>to conclusions on the basis of those errors. Not having further resources
>to do
>an intellectually-honest job, Article 29 ended up concluding that adequacy
>could
>only be provided by a country having "a law like ours."
Where does the Article 29 Working Party document WP 12 of 24 July 1998 (is
this what Prescott is referring to?) come to that conclusion, whether in
those words or in any paraphrasing? I can't find that conclusion in this
document. That paper wasn't meant to be 'researched', but DG XV had already
found 'further resources to do an intellectually-honest job'. The study
that I was involved in with my co-authors, available at
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg15/en/media/dataprot/studies/adequat.htm, was
commissioned by DG XV and published in November 1998 on that site and then
in 1999 in covers by the EU Office for Official Publications. This was
indeed researched. We assessed a methodology for studying 'adequacy',
developed from the 'First Orientations' paper (WP4 of 26 June 1997) of the
Working Party and later documents, which were then amalgamated into WP 12.
We did this from January to September 1998. Our remit was to assess the
usefulness of a method in terms of specific transfers and the Article 25
requirements, as applied to specific typical and very realistic
case-scenarios, and not at all to come to a substantive determination about
a country as a whole although inevitably we made observations in each case.
Note that in publishing it, the European Commission stated that the views
in the report were those of the authors and not the Commission's. Would
Charles Prescott care to comment on this report, whether on the
USA-relevant parts or more generally? Was it an intellectually-honest job?
Was it biased and prejudiced in terms of a 'statist' approach?
Charles Raab
Charles D. Raab
Professor of Government
Department of Politics
The University of Edinburgh
31 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh EH8 9JT
Scotland, UK
tel: +44 (0)131-650 4243
fax: +44 (0)131-650 6546
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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