Data transfer ruling protects European Union citizens

The litigation was started by Max Schrems following concerns from the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that NSA deploys intense surveillance programs to snoop on citizens and consumers, reported NBC News.

The ruling is thought to affect a total of 4,000 European and American companies.

Safe Harbor had allowed European tech companies to seamlessly transfer users’ personal data to and from the United States during routine business.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said she would work with the European Commission to reform the Safe Harbor agreement.

MEP Marian Harkin has released a statement in relation to the ECJ judgement, explaining that, “Safe harbour was an agreement between the European Union and the U.S.to authorise the transfer of personal data from EU Member States to organisations in the US that had complied with the Safe Harbour Privacy Principles”.

“We have a variety of concerns about this specific ruling; one of them is that we believe that this decision was based on incorrect assumptions about data privacy protections in the United States”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Frans Timmermans, the European Union commission vice president, told reporters: “other mechanisms for global transfers of personal data” are available.

“Last year, we doubled resources to the Data Protection Commissioner”, Mr Murphy said.

But Schrems appealed. His case eventually wound its way to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, which on Tuesday struck down the framework underpinning the data transfers of thousands of companies.

“It should be seen as part of a general trend – the European Court of Justice has been pro-privacy in a big way, making bold and strong decisions”, said Paul Bernal, a data protection expert at the University of East Anglia.

“In that regard, my office will immediately engage with our colleagues in other national supervisory authorities across Europe to determine how the judgment can be implemented in practice, quickly and effectively, particularly insofar as it impacts on EU/US data transfers”, Commissioner Dixon adds.

“The message is clear – that mass surveillance is not possible and against fundamental rights in Europe”, said Schrems after the ruling. The agreement allows such firms to self-certify that they are in fact adhering to the EU’s privacy protection requirements.

The second point is the Safe Harbor agreement is now invalid. They were then allowed to transfer European data to the US. Schrems, a regular Facebook user, for example, found after asking for his data logs that information he had deleted from his account was still maintained at the backend.

The ECJ yesterday judged that Data Protection authorities across European nations are “bound to disregard” Safe Harbour because its provisions are not compatible with the fundamental rights of EU citizens. His case claimed that the USA government invaded his privacy by sending his data to American websites, like Facebook. Snowden tweeted Schrems, “You’ve changed the world for the better”.