TPP trade pact draws flak for eroding online rights

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) international trade agreement may be a threat to the privacy of internet users and consumer rights.

The new TPP pact will have an impact on civil and digital rights of firms. Foreign trade experts hold the view that TPP pact needs ratification in individual countries before finalization of the pact.

Public forums express concerns over the inability of governments to prevent companies from data transfer.

After eight years of negotiations, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has been agreed by 12 nations. The full text of TPP agreement has been put online.

Business firms, lawyers, analysts, corporate advisors, and experts from several sections are going through it making their own analysis.

World's major economies such as the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand are part of the TPP pact. Mostly, citizen forums have already started raising their voice against the unregulated cross-border transfer of internet users' data.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that defends consumer rights in the digital world, criticizes that the TPP is a secretive, multi-national agreement. It puts restrictions on intellectual property (IP) laws for all the nations.

The 12 member nations under TPP are -- the US, Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam.

EFF says that TPP will rewrite global rules on IP enforcement. In the US also, it'll restrict even Congress' role in framing reforms in domestic laws.

The US is the biggest among 12 member nations under TPP pact. The long-awaited text, available online now, has become a cause of concern among many organizations and social groups.

Unions, lawmakers, and other interested groups are questioning the contents of the draft and said it's a difficult path for ratification in the US.

The 12 nations involved in TPP account for 40 percent of the global economy. The proposed tax cuts and tariffs on e-commerce may be aimed at transparency, but in fact, it will affect business and workers.

"It's worse than we thought," said Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

According to the TPP pact, governments will not have any say on companies hosting data on local servers. This means data protection policies are exempt from the rules.

In case, the data is highly subjective and restrictive standards, then TPP tribunals will review and take a decision, but not the governments.

TPP pact will also create an environment, in which one government can challenge another under TPP over measures on consumer privacy in the form of data transfer on compliance with data protection regulations in a country.

This clearly states that data from one country is vulnerable to another nation. Public Citizen, the digital rights organization, is raising voice against the restrictions on data localization laws.