Skip to footer

EU's high court nixes Safe Harbor deal: what that means for US tech firms

The Safe Harbor pact enabled US companies to self-check that they were meeting the European Union's high standards for data security, but a court ruling Tuesday invalidates Safe Harbor, requiring international watchdogs to check on data security.

|
Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP
A woman walks by the entrance to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, Monday. Europe's highest court has ruled in favor of an Austrian law student who claims a trans-Atlantic data protection agreement doesn't adequately protect consumers.

An international court decision ended 15 years of relatively painless data sharing among continents by ruling in favor of privacy but against a Safe Harbor pact.

The Tuesday ruling by the European Union Court of Justice is a victory for privacy advocates but a blow to the world's largest trading agreement – between the United States and the European Union – because the Safe Harbor pact had enabled tech companies to share data across the Atlantic without separate security checks from all the involved governments.

Safe Harbor was designed in 2000 to make trade easier by allowing more than 5,000 US companies to simply self-check that they are meeting EU standards for data security. The EU limits data-sharing with countries deemed lax on privacy, a list that particularly includes the US after Edward Snowden's allegations of en masse data collection by the US government.

The court ruling to remove Safe Harbor represents a culture clash, because the EU views data privacy as a fundamental right, while the US is willing to override that right in favor of national security.

The decision will affect major tech companies that require massive amounts of data sharing, such as Facebook, and Amazon.com, which stores data from European companies on its retail site.

"This is extremely bad news for EU-US trade," Richard Cumbley, the Global Head of technology, media and telecommunications at Linklaters law firm told Reuters. "Without Safe Harbor, (businesses) will be scrambling to put replacement measures in place."

The decision does not automatically stop data transfers, The Wall Street Journal reports. What it does do is assign international tech regulators the right and responsibility to investigate the security standards of US companies. Before, regulators could not do so because of Safe Harbor.

Many companies that have already put in place European Union-standard security methods should not need a significant policy change. What is different is that watchdogs no longer have to take such companies at their word.

"Companies will be working in a legal vacuum," Paul Meller, communications director for tech-lobbying outfit Digital Europe, told the Journal. "Many companies would be exposing themselves to legal action."

US companies that share data with countries in the European Union and regulators alike may now have a lot more work to do, because Safe Harbor had offered a blanket defense from lawsuits and investigations before.

This report includes material from Reuters.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to EU's high court nixes Safe Harbor deal: what that means for US tech firms
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/1006/EU-s-high-court-nixes-Safe-Harbor-deal-what-that-means-for-US-tech-firms
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe