BERLIN — Europe’s push to extend consumer protection to the digital economy has become the target of what observers are calling an unprecedented lobbying assault in Brussels by Silicon Valley technology companies and the U.S. government.

All the major U.S. tech companies have directed their Brussels-based lobbyists to follow the proposals as they work their way through the European Parliament. Together, the new laws could give 500 million consumers the ability to block many forms of online Web tracking and targeted advertising.

But in an unusual display of direct diplomacy, the U.S. Commerce Department is also lobbying on behalf of the Obama administration, which is concerned that sweeping new privacy controls could hurt the U.S. tech industry in Europe.

So it was no surprise when three U.S.-based representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Consumer Federation of America and the Friends of Privacy U.S.A, an offshoot of the London-based Privacy International, weighed in themselves during the past week with a different message: Europe needs to pass tough new restrictions to save the digital economy, not destroy it.

The proposal, made last February by Viviane Reding, the E.U. justice commissioner, has brought into the open how much Europe and the United States differ on privacy rights and their role in the digital economy.

Barry Steinhardt, the chairman of Friends of Privacy, founded just last year, called it a “titanic clash.”

“The rest of the world is looking to see who will prevail because the Asians, Latin Americans and Africans all need to do business with the U.S. and Europe,” Mr. Steinhardt said. “So this is extraordinarily important for Americans.”

Mr. Steinhardt, Susan Grant, the director of protection for the consumer federation, and Ben Wizner, a lawyer who focuses on speech, privacy and technology at the A.C.L.U., met with a handful of European members of Parliament. They included Jan Albrecht, a German lawmaker who is the prime sponsor of the proposal, and Sean Kelly, an Irish conservative who has sponsored amendments to allow global businesses to continue with unfettered data mining in Europe.

In interviews, the three said they had taken the unusual step of lobbying directly in Europe to counter the activities of American technology businesses and the U.S. Commerce Department, which has led an effort to weaken or remove provisions of the European legislation that would let people block or limit standard Web tracking.

“We are here to correct the record,” Mr. Wizner said. “Certainly the U.S. government has been making misleading statements about the state of electronic privacy law in the U.S., how consumer protections are as strong in the U.S. as in Europe. But that is simply not the case.”

Mr. Wizner said the United States had no equivalent to Europe’s general data protection law. U.S. law, he said, guarantees consumer privacy only in specific cases, like medical and financial records, but permits online companies to conduct unfettered data mining with only take-it-or-leave-it privacy controls.

Under the proposals, Web businesses would be unable to perform basic collecting and profiling of individual computer users unless they gave their explicit consent as part of policies that allow them to specify what kinds of information could be collected and for what purpose. Businesses would also have to permanently remove and delete personal information from users upon request, and national regulators would gain the ability to fine companies up to 2 percent of their annual sales for not complying.

The proposals are before the European Parliament and a council of 27 E.U. justice ministers, which are attempting to put together consensus positions. Parliament is expected to complete its draft by late April and would then enter negotiations with the justice ministers over the remainder of the year, with adoption expected in early 2014.

The outcome of the debate is critical to U.S. technology companies, which typically generate a third or more of their sales in the 27-nation European Union, often commanding greater, and more lucrative, market shares than in the United States.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/eu-privacy-proposal-lays-bare-differences-with-us.html?partner=rss&emc=rss