欧盟《隐私与电子通信条例》草案评述

A Review of the EU Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications

1月10日,欧盟委员会提议出一项新法案《隐私与电子通信条例》,该条例作为此前通过的《一般数据保护条例》的特别法,意欲取代当前的《电子隐私指令》,旨在规制电子通信服务并保护与用户终端设备相关的信息。一改此前的通信隐私规则只约束传统电信服务商的局面,该条例将即时通讯、Vo IP等OTT服务商纳入与传统电信服务商一样的隐私监管框架,对电子通信数据的保护不仅包括通信内容本身,而且包括时间、地点、来源等标记通信内容的元数据,并且在地域上可以约束欧盟境外的互联网企业。新的条例一旦生效实施,将对电子通信行业的数据实践产生深远影响。

On January 10, the European Commission proposed a new Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications. As a special law of the General Data Protection adopted previously, the new Regulation is intended to replace the current ePrivacy Directive, aiming at regulating electronic communications services and protecting information related to end users＇ terminal equipment. The new Regulation is expected to change the previous situation that communication privacy rules only apply to the traditional telecom service providers. The new Regulation will not only put instant messaging, VoIP and other OTT providers into the same privacy regulatory framework as traditional telecom service providers already have been, but also expand the protection scope from communication content itself to metadata marking the communication＇ s time, place, source, etc. And the proposed new Regulation is applicable to the Intemet companies geographically outside the EU. Once the new Regulation comes into force in the future, it will have a profound impact on the data practices of the electronic communications industry.