New post-Snowden deal aims to preserve privacy of EU citizens’ data in the US
Europe and the US have reached a new “robust” deal over data sharing that is hoped to ensure the safety of EU citizens’ data when transferred across the Atlantic by firms such as Facebook, Apple and Google.
The new EU-US Privacy Shield will allow companies to transfer and process EU citizens’ data in the US given certain privacy guarantees. It comes after the original data-sharing safe harbour agreement from 2000 used by 4,500 companies was struck down in October by the European court of justice, following legal action by an Austrian privacy campaigner following NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass US government surveillance.
Andrus Ansip, European commissioner for the digital single market said: “We have agreed with our US partners a new framework that will ensure the right checks and balances for our citizens.”
Vera Jourova, European commissioner for justice, said: “For the first time ever, the US has given the EU binding assurances that the access of public authorities for national security purposes will be subject to clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms.”
He said the deal struck two days late between Brussels and Washington is greatly improved over the original 2000 agreement, offering “robust and significant improvements” as well as “detailed assurances” on safeguards and limitations of US surveillance programs for the first time.
Part of the EU-US Privacy Shield will involve an annual joint review of the data-sharing agreement and a new US official responsible for following up EU data protection complaints.
The new pact will effectively allow the easy transfer of data from the EU to the US, with promises of privacy protections equivalent to those afforded to the data of EU citizens while in the EU. The invalidation of the original 2000 deal spurred fears over privacy challenges from EU citizens worried about their data privacy, which would have landed with the individual data protection authorities in each of the 28 member states and could potentially have proved expensive for US technology companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google.
