Slashdot Mirror
EU Court of Justice Declares US-EU Data Transfer Pact Invalid
Sique writes: Europe's highest court ruled on Tuesday that a widely used international agreement for moving people's digital data between the European Union and the United States was invalid. The decision, by the European Court of Justice, throws into doubt how global technology giants like Facebook and Google can collect, manage and analyze online information from their millions of users in the 28-member bloc. The court decreed that the data-transfer agreement was invalid as of Tuesday's ruling. New submitter nava68 adds links to coverage at the Telegraph; also at TechWeek Europe.
From TechWeek Europe's article:
The ruling was the court’s final decision in a data-protection case brought by 27-year-old Austrian law student Max Schrems against the Irish data protection commissioner. That case, in turn, was spurred by Schrems’ concerns over the collection of his personal data by Facebook, whose European headquarters is in Ireland, and the possibility that the data was being handed over to US intelligence services.
If you look at how this law case started, it was initiated by a private citizen. Not by the EU executive branch. The EU justice branch made a decision that the EU justice branch is visibly not comfortable with, because it places a lot of companies in legal limbo. Read more here:
http://www.economist.com/news/...
Because the EU executive branch did nothing about it themselves . . . well, it shows that they were in cahoots with the USA/NSA folks.
So in this case, it is not a shakedown by the EU. The EU governments and Executive branch were perfectly happy with the way things were. It was a private citizen who appealed to the EU highest court that caused this.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I assume this ruling helps US cloud providers since even more small companies will be compelled to not host their own servers. I can easily spin up servers on AWS in Ireland and Frankfurt, but not so easily set up my own data center.
Its rare for any increase in regulation to not help large companies, since they have the scale to deal with the lawyer fees necessary to comply.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The European union will be isis by the time they are done.
Looking at some of the appeasers here it wouldn't surprise me
Wow, you guys have really been taken in by the US media's propaganda. They want you to be afraid. A frightened populace is a controllable populace.
Do you really not see how the fear of Muslim terrorists has been used to curtail your freedoms and tighten control of the authorities? We now have the NSA and who knows who else spying on everyone, the FBI looking at what you read, border checkpoints miles from any border and police using evidence collected in secret, all in the name of protecting us from terrorists.
Terrorists use violence to put fear into a population. Well who is really putting fear into our population? The media and the government spokespeople who feed them information. They want you to be afraid so you'll support their wars (that they lie to us about) and their restrictive policies at home, and keep watching their news channels. Don't fall for it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
These gigantic corporations are not "U.S. companies" by any stretch of the imagination - if that term even has any meaning at all any more. They are me-first entities whose only allegiance is to themselves, and they operate globally with complete cynicism. If they can't defy regulations in secret (VW?) or win their case in court (Microsoft) or co-opt authorities and get regulations changed openly or behind the curtain, they will accommodate the players who are large enough that their citizens and corporations can't be forgone as customers. And that certainly includes both Europe and the U.S.
Wow, you guys have really been taken in by the US media's propaganda.
I live in the US and I have no clue what you're referring to. These are just idiots. The media here is bad but not this bad or in this way. The extreme right republicans would do this but most of the media is on the left.
At the risk of sounding smug, you aren't supposed to notice. The message management is subtle enough that it's hard to detect. I would recommend the film "Manufacturing Consent" and the "Century of the Self" documentary series. You might also read the book "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays. From Bernays' book:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
That's what I'm talking about. Bernays went on to revolutionize the fields of advertising and public relations. His methods work to influence the thoughts, opinions and attitudes of people without their knowledge. They really do work; power now relies on it. Look into it, if you're interested. I find it quite fascinating.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)