Legal opinion of advocate-general of the EU: US cannot be trusted on internet-privacy

[DetlefK]

http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-09/cp150106en.pdf

1. Advocate-general Yves Bot of the Court of Justice of the European Union has come to the conclusion that the European Commission's premise that the US were guaranteeing privacy-rights on internet-data does not preempt EU-states from treating the US as if it didn't guarantee those privacy-rights. The European Commision's decision that it has the primacy on this decision is invalid.

2. As the revelations of Edward Snodden have shown, the US collects private internet-data indiscriminately and european citizens have no legal recourse on this.
The Advocate General considers that, in those circumstances, a third country cannot in any event be regarded as ensuring an adequate level of protection, and this is all the more so since the safe harbour scheme as defined in the Commission decision does not contain any appropriate guarantees for preventing mass and generalised access to the transferred data. Indeed, no independent authority is able to monitor, in the United States, breaches of the principles for the protection of personal data committed by public actors, such as the United States security agencies, in respect of citizens of the EU.



The verdict of the advocate-general is not binding. It is a proposal for a legal remedy for a legal problem, to be deliberated by the European Court.

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Well. According to this legal opinion, the US does not protect private internet-data the same way it is protected in the EU.

Why is this a problem?

The "Safe Harbor"-treaty about the exchange of internet-data between the US and the EU is based on the faulty premise that the US were providing said safeguards. A new "Safe Harbor"-treaty is currently being negotiated between the US and the European Commission. 4410 corporations are certified under the recent "Safe Harbor"-treaty, i.e. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe...

Without those legal safeguards, the US doesn't match the criteria for a "Safe Harbor"-treaty. And without this treaty, US-based companies like the ones mentioned above won't be allowed to handle private internet-data of EU-citizens in a way that gives the US access to this data.