The European Court of Justice has just ruled that the transatlantic Safe Harbour agreement, which lets American companies use a single standard for consumer privacy and data storage in both the US and Europe, is invalid. The ruling came after Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks showed that European data stored by US companies was not safe from surveillance that would be illegal in Europe.
This could have far-reaching consequences for Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US tech giants operating in Europe.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) was more aggressive, accusing the EU of “protectionism.”
Why should our data automatically be sent to the USA?
Can we have all of your data Senator Wyden?
Quid-pro-quo and all that.
No? Well then go sing for ours.
Technically he is correct, of course. This is a classic case of protectionism. The EU is protecting it’s citizens.
Edited 2015-10-06 19:59 UTC
Fighting fire with fire, then.
> Why should our data automatically be sent to the USA?
Google, Facebook, etc. are US based companies offering a free service in exchange for data mining the users. The question is how, not if, the companies will send data back to the US anyways.
> Can we have your data too?
Start an online service with the same business model and servers in Europe, and sure.
tidux,
Interesting idea, and I wonder if this would turn into a political debate in the US…
Nah, it would turn into an economic failure because there’s not enough transatlantic fiber to make it viable.
We have Snowdon to thank for this (in part) and many other good things (like a review of legislation in the UK, again in part).
But the general public don’t seem to care enough.
So as long as they don’t care enough to vote with their wallets/personaldata … the companies will continue to try to get away with as much as they can.
Snowden, not Snowdon
I don’t care where they store my Facebook posts.
And if somebody is worried, why don’t they simply steer clear of Facebook?
(reordering a bit because the answer makes more sense then)
That’s fine for you. But the whole world isn’t you.
Safe Harbor replaces enforcement of EU privacy laws with the mere promise that US companies implement at least a comparable standard.
But what if they don’t? There’s no provision in the Safe Harbor agreements that a judge can review the situation.
This means that Safe Harbor is undermining rule of law. Which is why a court that was established to uphold it considers Safe Harbor invalid.
For comparison: What would you think would US courts do with a bilateral agreement that allows EU pharmaceutical companies – with no legal recourse – to disregard FDA testing for products sold in the US, as long as they “promise” to uphold comparable standards?
While the ruling might be initiated with Facebook.
The more interesting is the data I don’t control.
So for example the insurance companies. They have data about me, but I don’t control where they store it.
So now I can be pretty sure they won’t be storing this data outside of the EU ?