Civil rights and e-communications organizations lobbied Thursday before...

to approve strong rules, saying recent revelations on government surveillance involving major Internet companies highlight “the urgency of an update of Europe’s privacy rules.” The European Commission-proposed data protection regulation would have a major impact on the digital environment for citizens, businesses and public bodies, the statement said. The groups are concerned that any weakening of data protection rules would undermine the rights and freedoms of Europeans, they said. Any new rules must limit data collection to the minimum necessary, ensure privacy by design and safeguard the rights of individuals to delete their data from online services, they said. The regulation will “only be as strong as its weakest link,” and shouldn’t have any loopholes that undermine democratic rights, said coalition members, which include European Digital Rights, La Quadrature du Net and Privacy International. They were backed by 23 U.S. public interest groups who told MEPs (http://xrl.us/bpzbmp) that “the promotion of stronger privacy standards in Europe will benefit consumers around the globe.” Tougher data protection is urgently needed, said the U.S. coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Center for Digital Democracy. The extent of data collection and access by U.S. intelligence agencies and the involvement of U.S. Internet companies “is much greater than we were aware,” they wrote. Congress has “so far failed to take necessary steps” to update privacy laws or rein in the National Security Agency, they said. Consumers on both sides of the Atlantic are at risk, they said. Many of the arguments against the EU data protection regulation aren’t credible, the groups wrote. Self-regulation isn’t working, they said. “And remarkably, even after the revelations this summer, on privacy Americans trust the NSA and the IRS more than they do Facebook and Google,” they told lawmakers. In their joint statement (http://bit.ly/1cxpx9x), the GSM Association, European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, European Competitive Telecommunications Association and Cable Europe said the data protection regulation must ensure “the right balance between protecting the fundamental right to data protection and privacy and ensuring that business and innovation can flourish within a truly uniform single market.” They urged MEPs to make the regulation applicable to the processing of EU citizens’ personal data regardless of the service provider’s location. However, they said, the current proposals and discussion don’t address inconsistencies between the draft regulation and the e-privacy directive and their impact on the internal market and consumer protections. For a technology neutral system, functionally equivalent services and data must be treated equally, they said. In addition, the regulation should be underpinned by a risk-based approach to privacy in areas such as consent and profiling, and should simplify international data transfers, the organizations said.