How Safe? – The Future Of The US-EU Safe Harbor

The US-EU Safe Harbor has been back in the news recently as Germany's data protection commissioners met at the end of January and expressed impatience at the delay in implementing what many view as necessary reforms to the program. The European Court of Justice also recently heard a challenge to Facebook's reliance on the Safe Harbor for the transfer of user data in what many see as an important test case; this lawsuit will be the topic of a future blog post.

Established in 1998, the Safe Harbor program provides a mechanism by which companies can publicly represent that they have established internal controls that provide an adequate level of protection, thereby permitting transfers of personal information from the EU to the US. (EU data protection law provides that – with limited exceptions – personal data can be transferred outside the European Economic Area only if an adequate level of protection is ensured, and the US is not among the countries whose laws the EU