Last October, the European Court of Justice struck down the Safe Harbor agreement, a 15-year-old transatlantic arrangement that permitted U.S. companies to transfer data, such as people’s Google-search histories, outside the EU. In invalidating the agreement, the ECJ found that the blurry relationship between private-sector data collection and national security in the United States violates the privacy rights of EU citizens whose data travel overseas. The decision leaves U.S. technology companies with extensive international operations on shaky legal ground.
Although some informed American observers anticipated the decision, most were caught flat-footed; some seemed downright bewildered. Myron Brilliant,
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Transatlantic Data War: Europe Fights Back against the NSA,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2016).