Yahoo – AFP,
6 Oct 2015
 |
The 'Safe
Harbour' agreement reached by the United States and European
Commission in 2000
was based on the premise that US laws offered similar
privacy protection to
those in the European Union (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
|
Luxembourg
(AFP) - The European Union's top court on Tuesday ruled that a key
transatlantic data sharing deal relied on by companies such as Facebook was
invalid in the light of spying revelations in the Edward Snowden scandal.
In a major
blow to US tech firms, the court said the 2000 "Safe Harbour"
agreement between the United States and the EU did not sufficiently guarantee
the protection of Europeans' personal data and must be struck out.
The
stunning decision stems from a David-and-Goliath complaint against social media
giant Facebook lodged against Irish authorities by Max Schrems, an Austrian law
student privacy campaigner.
 |
Austrian
right-to-privacy activist Max
Schrems waits for the verdict at the
European
Court of Justice (SCJ) in
Luxembourg on October 6, 2015
(AFP Photo/John Thys)
|
The court
said Irish authorities now had to decide whether transfer of data from
Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended
"on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of
protection of personal data."
"YAY,"
Schrems tweeted after the judgment.
He later
said in a statement that the decision was a "milestone when it comes to
online privacy."
"It
clarifies that mass surveillance violates our fundamental rights. This decision
is a major blow for US global surveillance that heavily relies on private
partners," he said.
Schrems
filed the case against Ireland's data protection authority because Facebook's
European headquarters are based there.
Major US
web giants including Facebook and Apple have set up headquarters in Ireland to
take advantage of favourable tax laws. Facebook data is then transferred to
servers in the United States.
'Inaccurate assertions'
But Schrems
had argued that the 15-year-old Safe Harbour deal is too weak to guarantee the
privacy of European residents in the wake of details provided by former US
National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Snowden.
The data
deal allows data transfers by thousands of businesses on the grounds that US
laws offer similar protection to those in the 28-nation European Union.
The
European Commission -- the executive arm of the EU -- is widely expected to
announce the imminent agreement of a new version of the Safe Harbour pact with
the United States.
There was
no immediate reaction to the judgment from Washington, but last month the
United States said an opinion by the EU court's top legal counsel which reached
similar conclusions was based on "inaccurate assertions".
 |
Former NSA
contractor Edward
Snowden leaked details of the vast
surveillance programs (AFP
Photo)
|
"The
United States does not and has not engaged in indiscriminate surveillance of
anyone, including ordinary European citizens," the US mission to Brussels
said in a statement last week.
"We
fully respect the European Union's legal process; however, we believe that it
is essential to comment in this instance because the Advocate General's opinion
rests on numerous inaccurate assertions about intelligence practices of the
United States."
Snowden,
who remains wanted by the United States and currently lives in Moscow, opened a
Twitter account last week, just days before the judgment.
His
revelations showed that the NSA's PRISM programme used Silicon Valley giants
Apple, Google and Facebook to gather user data.
In the wake
of the scandal, the EU and Washington began talks to revamp Safe Harbour.
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