Member-only story
China’s chance to become a global AI player will depend on its data privacy laws
, an Austrian lawyer and activist who has won important privacy court cases on behalf of Europeans against US companies such as Meta and others that exploit loopholes in EU legislation, is now turning his attention and that of his organization, the , to .
Increasingly popular in Europe and around the world, these social networks and e-commerce apps also export the personal data of their users to China, whose authoritarian government has access to it. Four of the above-mentioned companies admit they send the personal data of European citizens to China, while the other two say it goes to undisclosed “third countries”, which presumably includes China.
EU legislation forbids data transfers outside the bloc to countries that do not meet its data protection standards, such as China. Chinese and other companies get round this by using contracts whereby they undertake to respect EU protections even if data is processed in China.
This requires them to carry out an impact assessment to verify that Europeans’ data is safe in the destination country and that the SCCs do not…
