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Safe Harbor European Court Data Protection Ruling

By Andr' Bywater and Gayle McFarlane
November 02, 2015

On Oct. 6 of this year, the 'European Court of Justice gave a very important judgment about EU data protection law in the so-called Schrems case, where it ruled as follows:

  • The EU Safe Harbor regime is invalid; and,
  • National EU Member State data protection regulators have the power to investigate complaints about the adequacy of the level of protection of data transfers to the U.S., and to suspend data transfers if they conclude that the U.S. (or indeed any other jurisdiction outside the EEA) does not provide an adequate level of protection.

All U.S. business transferring personal data from the EU need to take note of this judgment and consider what to do as a result.

Background

Following the Edward Snowden U.S. surveillance revelations in 2013, an Austrian citizen and privacy activist, Maximillian Schrems, brought a legal challenge before the Irish High Court challenging his rejected complaint before the Irish data protection regulator. He had claimed before the Irish regulator that the U.S. does not offer protection against surveillance by its 'intelligence authorities of data transferred to the U.S. from the EU. In this case, Schrems' data was being transferred from Facebook's Irish subsidiary to the U.S.

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