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US not allowed to take EU data

by on07 October 2015


Legal ruling puts US tech in a spin

The US technology industry is paying the price for the obsession that its government has on stealing data.


The EU has ruled that assumptions that data sent to the US were safe were incorrect and it has voided the "safe harbour" status given to the nation.

 

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and indeed outfit which takes data can be barred from transferring private information across the Atlantic. Europe's highest court struck down a 15-year-old data sharing treaty saying that the US has invalidated the "Safe Harbour" agreement.

The decision, which follows a lengthy privacy battle against Facebook by Max Schrems, a campaigning Austrian law student, means that US internet companies can no longer bypass national data protection authorities. The decision does not make transatlantic data transfers from Europe illegal, it means that companies will have to quickly make sure they comply with the EU's strict data protection laws.

Schrems took Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner to court when the authority argued that Safe Harbour meant it did not have to investigate Facebook, whose European headquarters are in Dublin.

The case eventually made it to the ECJ, which yesterday claimed that the Safe Harbour scheme "enables interference, by United States public authorities, with the fundamental rights of persons".
The judgment requires the Irish authority "to decide whether... transfer of the data of Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of protection of personal data," the ECJ said.

Facebook insisted its data transfers from the EU to America were legal and relied on a number of the methods prescribed by EU law to legally transfer data to the US from Europe, aside from Safe Harbour.

"It is imperative that EU and US governments ensure that they continue to provide reliable methods for lawful data transfers and resolve any issues relating to national security," a Facebook spokesman said.

 

Critics of the decision said that it could be a major blow to transatlantic trade and urged politicians to put together a new agreement quickly. Of course that will mean surrendering the control of EU data to the NSA.

Vera Jourová, the EU's justice commissioner, said that authorities wanted to negotiate a "safer Safer Harbour", but was unable to put a timetable on when such an agreement would surface.  Motivation must be low because the EU knows it will never get the US to shake the idea that it rules the world and can spy on who it likes – and if it might so paranoid it spies on its allies that is their problem.  

Stlll the technology companies harmed by the law change are big on lobbying and have a lot of money to spend as the US elections come up.

Last modified on 07 October 2015
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