February

A new body of European data protection authorities could have the power to adopt legally binding decisions in cross-border disputes over a company 's misuse of personal data, according to a draft document seen by Reuters. Under a mechanism originally proposed in reforms of Europe 's data protection laws, businesses operating across the 28-nation European Union would have to deal only with the data protection authority in the country where they are headquartered - even if alleged mishandling of data affects citizens in another country. A new proposal by Italy, which holds the rotating European presidency, gives all concerned authorities the chance to intervene in all stages of the decision-making process. A failure to reach an agreement between the authorities concerned, or even conflicts over which regulator should take the lead, would then be arbitrated by the European data protection Board, with legally binding powers.

The proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation will be finalized in 2015. That was the conclusion of leading lights of the EU data protection scene at a standing-room-only event in Brussels on Wednesday. It appears that a tipping point in the negotiations has been reached. The Council of the European Union (the 28 EU member states) needs to finalize its version of the draft regulation before negotiations can enter their final stage, but it has made incremental progress in the last 12 months. Enrico Costa, Italy 's deputy minister for justice, has now confirmed that the Italian Presidency, which runs until the end of this year, intends to present agreed proposals on the public sector and the regulatory one-stop shop (OSS) at the meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council (Council of Ministers) on 5 December. If agreement can be reached on these two areas it will represent a remarkable achievement, as these have been seen as insurmountable obstacles to progress.

Screening for adverse media can be a challenge. However, with the E.U. commission ruling that many items can be removed from Google, this challenge has become harder.

As such, there is greater benefit for proprietary databases that are not subject to such regulation. To illustrate the point consider that recently, according to several news sources, details of a case reporting that Mohamed Alie Barrie, 38, of Pinewood Close, Dartford, being charged with conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to money launder and money laundering were removed from Google 's searches - meaning that such search results are no longer discoverable within Google.