Nine months after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order that updated rules for the transfer of data between the US and the EU, the European Commission this week ratified the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Industry experts, however, say it will be challenged at the European Court of Justice (CJEU), and stands a good chance of being struck down.
The move comes three years after the CJEU shut down the previous EU-US data sharing agreement, known as Privacy Shield, on grounds that the US doesn’t provide adequate protection for personal data, particularly in relation to state surveillance. In 2015, a previous attempt to forge a data sharing pact, dubbed Safe Harbor, was also struck down by the CJEU.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the new framework should provide “legal certainty” to transatlantic businesses, calling the commitments “unprecedented.”
“Today we take an important step to provide trust to citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the US, and at the same time to reaffirm our shared values,” she said in a statement. “It shows that by working together, we can address the most complex issues.”
However, industry experts expect the accord to face a plethora of legal challenges from privacy advocates before ultimately being struck down like its predecessors.
“We have various options for a challenge already in the drawer, although we are sick and tired of this legal ping-pong,” said Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who founded NOYB (None of Your Business) – European Center for Digital Rights. In 2016 and 2020, Schrems initiated legal proceedings against Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield, respectively, which led to the CJEU invalidating both agreements.
“We currently expect this to be back at the Court of Justice by the beginning of next year,” Schrems said in a statement published on NOYB’s website.
US privacy laws need fundamental overhaul for agreement to proceed
The EU-US Data Privacy Framework is based on the executive order signed by Biden in October 2022. In essence, the agreement places new restrictions on electronic surveillance by American intelligence agencies and gives Europeans new avenues to launch a complaint when they believe their personal information has been used unlawfully by US intelligence agencies.
This in itself could prove problematic since, if the next US presidential election should see the top job go to a Republican candidate, there’s a very real chance this executive order could be overturned, pulling the rug out from underneath the agreement, said Nader Henein, an analyst at Gartner. When Donlad Trump became president in 2016, he ripped up a number of international treates that had been approved by his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama.
While privacy experts have said from the outset that the agreement doesn’t adequately address the issues that led to Safe…
2023-07-12 18:48:02
Original from www.computerworld.com rnrn