By Olga Symeonoglou
On October 6, the European Court of Justice invalidated the Safe
Harbor pact, ruling
that the privacy rights of European citizens are being violated by American
companies. For fifteen years, the safe harbor agreement allowed U.S. companies
to transfer data of European citizens overseas, but the ECJ found that this violated
Europeans’ privacy rights because the U.S. government would have access to
their personal information. The ruling comes as a shock to many companies that
have relied on the data transfer agreement, but a new
agreement is in the works.
