As I am sure many readers are well aware, on Oct. 6, the Court of Justice of the European Union found that the protections of individual data users’ privacy under the Safe Harbor program were insufficient to protect the privacy rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and so invalidated the program. The Safe Harbor program, implementing an agreement between the United States and the European Union, is one under which entities seeking to bring data from the European Union to the United States that contains information personal to protected EU data subjects must comply with rigorous security procedures and so certify to the Federal Trade Commission. The court found that because the Safe Harbor agreement between the United States and the European Union did not prevent the National Security Agency from accessing data transferred from the European Union, and because the United States provided no legal recourse for individuals whose data was not properly protected, the Safe Harbor program was not sufficient to protect the privacy of EU subjects.

In this month’s column, we will review the opinion. We will also discuss possible next steps for those who wish to transfer data from the European Union to the United States, and the issues that can arise with those next steps.

The Opinion

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