BRUSSELS: The EU’s highest court struck down a deal that allows thousands of companies to easily transfer personal data from Europe to the United States, in a landmark ruling on Tuesday that follows revelations of mass US government snooping.

Many companies, both US and European, use the Safe Harbour system to help them get round cumbersome checks to transfer data between offices on both sides of the Atlantic. That includes payroll and human resources information as well as lucrative data used for online advertising, which is of particular importance to tech companies.

But the decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) sounds the death knell for the system, set up by the European Commission 15 years ago. It is used by over 4,000 firms including IBM, Google and Ericsson.

The court said Safe Harbour did not sufficiently protect EU citizens’ personal data since the requirements of American national security, public interest and law enforcement trumped the privacy safeguards contained in the framework.

In addition, EU citizens have no means of legal recourse against the misuse of their data in the United States, the court said. A bill is currently winding its way through the US Congress to give Europeans the right to legal redress.

The ECJ in its ruling referred to revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, which included that the Prism programme allowed US authorities to harvest private information directly from big tech companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google. The United States, which in the run up to the decision had issued strenuous defences of its intelligence programmes, said it was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2015

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