MEPs ask Commission to act after revelations of EU sensitive data sell-off

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A cross-party coalition of Members of the European Parliament demanded the European Commission takes action following the revelations that sensitive data from European leaders was being sold to the highest bidder.

The initiative came after two reports by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties published on Tuesday (14 November) that revealed a trade in real-time bidding data on EU and US leaders and military personnel sent by Google and other firms to China and Russia.

“The security of our EU institutions is at stake, and we demand swift action to assess the extent of this threat and including potential legislative measures to protect the privacy and security of European citizens in the ever-evolving landscape of digital threats”, MEP Paul Tang told Euractiv.

Real-time bidding (RTB) is the instantaneous selling and buying of data. This technology broadcasts sensitive information about people while they use the internet, for example, the device they are using or their location.

The bidding is an automatic process during which several advertisers bid on a piece of user information. This process usually takes fractions of seconds.

The winning ad with the highest bid will be the one the user sees. Most applications and websites use this system; such data collection can happen even if users have a secure device.

Selling data

According to the ICCL, such sensitive information “about key EU and US figures and military personnel flows to foreign states and non-state actors” through the RTB systems.

Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow of ICCL, said that “the RTB industry’s data free-for-all has created a serious national threat.”

The organisation calls on “the US Federal Trade Commission, European data protection authorities, and the European Commission to urgently act. The industry can not be allowed to put our elected leaders and military personnel at risk.”

The ICCL notes that in China and Russia, national laws allow security agencies to access such data.

Hence, Google and other RTB firms send EU and US RTB data to these countries, among them to “AiData, a Russian data broker that sells data on people in Russia who are frequent visitors to political opposition websites”.

Other companies selling data may include Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon, one of the reports said.

The ICCL believes this is a “Cambridge Analytica style psychological profiling of target individuals,” with information about their movements, financial and mental health problems, vulnerabilities, and even if they were likely survivors of sexual abuse.

The reports also identified a surveillance tool called Patternz using the data of five billion people, including information about their driving routes and children.

Calls for EU intervention

The centre-left lawmaker Paul Tang is tabling a series of written questions, seen by Euractiv, to the European Commission about the matter.

The Dutch MEP gathered the support of other socialists, namely René Repasi, Evelyn Regner, Birgit Sippel, Maria Manuel Leitão Marques (S&D), and Alex Agius Saliba (S&D), as well as the greens Alexandra Geese and Kim van Sparrentak and centrist Karen Melchior.

These lawmakers are all part of the Tracking-Free Ads Coalition that pushed for a ban on targeted advertising in the context of the Digital Services Act.

The written questions ask whether the EU executive will request the European Data Protection Board and other supervisory authorities to begin an examination.

“Can the Commission provide or commission a comprehensive assessment of the extent to which EU policymakers and (military) are targeted through RTB and how their sensitive data is transmitted to Russia and China?”

Moreover, the signatories would like to know more about the concrete steps to be taken by the Commission “with a view on the next legislature to protect EU citizens”, such as “introducing legislation segmenting the advertising market and other restrictions to protect the privacy and security of European citizens in the face of these threats”.

Luca Bertuzzi contributed to the reporting.

[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Alice Taylor]