Safe harbor ruling means it's 'open season against American businesses'
The US government is "deeply disappointed" by the European Court of Justice's decision to effectively kill the long-standing "safe harbor" agreement covering the flow of people's personal data across the Atlantic.
Under European law, personal information on EU citizens must stay within the Continent for privacy reasons. To allow American businesses to access Europeans' information across The Pond, the US had a "safe harbor" pact with the EU that promised to keep people's data secure.
That agreement was in place until Tuesday this week."Since 2000, the Safe Harbor Framework has proven to be critical to protecting privacy on both sides of the Atlantic and to supporting economic growth in the United States and the EU," Commerce secretary Penny Pritzker said in a statement published a few hours after the judgment was announced.
"We are deeply disappointed in today's decision," she noted, adding that it "creates significant uncertainty for both US and EU companies and consumers, and puts at risk the thriving transatlantic digital economy."
The decision has certainly got the political wheels moving, however, thanks to the huge question mark it has placed over the business models of many of Silicon Valley's tech companies....MORE
Also at the Register, some background from earlier today:
