Privacy Alert: The Privacy Shield, As It Stands Today

Following the invalidation of the US-EU Safe Harbor by the Court of Justice of the European Union in October last year (see From a Safe Harbor to a Privacy Shield), the U.S. Department of Commerce and the EU Commission have recently released a draft of a replacement regime, called the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. The new framework is intended to increase protections for transferring EU residents' personal data to the U.S. and thereby facilitate the transatlantic flow of data. Now that the dust has settled, we take a look at the key provisions of the Privacy Shield as they relate to U.S. organizations and assess the hurdles that must be overcome before the Privacy Shield becomes a reality.