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ARTICLE · 22 OCTOBER 2015

Safe Harbor No More: EU-US Data Transfer Deal Invalidated By Court

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Recently the European Court of Justice (the ECJ) rendered a decision invalidating the Safe Harbor Framework between the European Union (the EU) and the United States...

CanadaPrivacy
Imran Ahmad
Imran Ahmad
Bernice Karn
Bernice Karn
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Recently the European Court of Justice (the ECJ) rendered a decision invalidating the Safe Harbor Framework between the European Union (the EU) and the United States which allowed organizations to transfer personal data from EU member states to the United States. The decision has resulted in significant uncertainty for the 4,500 organizations that relied on the agreement who will now need to implement alternatives for the transfer of personal data that comply with the ruling.

Background

In 1998, the European Commission (the EC) implemented the Data Privacy Directive which prohibits the transfer of personal data to non-EU countries that do not meet the EU's "adequacy" standard for privacy protection. In 2000, following negotiations between the EC and the United States and the issuance of EC decision 2000/520, the Safe Harbor Framework came into force. It allowed an organization to transfer personal data from the EU member states to the US, so long as it

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