Glyn Moody writes:
We pointed out last year that one of the knock-on effects of Edward Snowden’s revelations about massive NSA (and GCHQ) spying on Europeans was a call to suspend the economically-critical Safe Harbor program. Without Safe Harbor, it would be illegal under European law for companies like Google and Facebook to take EU citizens’ personal data outside the EU, which would make it more difficult to run those services in their present form. Nothing much happened after that call by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee — not least because it does not have any direct power to formulate EU policy — but the unhappiness with Safe Harbor has evidently not gone away.
Heise Online reports that two of Germany’s data protection commissioners — those for the cities of Berlin and Bremen — have started proceedings against the transfer of data to the US under the Safe Harbor agreement (original in German.)
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