EU's Top Court Restricts Personal-Data Transfers to US, Citing Surveillance Concerns
July 16 2020 - 4:43AM
Dow Jones News
By Sam Schechner and Valentina Pop
Thousands of companies may have to stop storing information
about European Union residents on servers in the U.S., after the
bloc's top court on Thursday ruled that such transfers expose
Europeans to U.S. government surveillance without what it described
as "actionable rights" to challenge it.
The surprise ruling from the EU's Luxembourg-based Court of
Justice, which invalidates a widely used EU-U.S. data-transfer
agreement called Privacy Shield, is a victory for privacy activists
who have long said that U.S. surveillance practices should make it
ineligible to store European data. But the decision will create
legal headaches and potentially disrupt operations for thousands of
multinational companies that do business in the U.S. and
Europe.
Depending on how it's applied, the ruling could force some of
them --including tech giants like Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc. and
Apple Inc.--to decide between a costly shift toward data centers
into Europe, or cutting off business with the region.
Blocking data transfers to the U.S. could up-end billions of
dollars of trade from cross-border data activities, including cloud
services, human resources, marketing and advertising, tech
advocates say.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Valentina
Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2020 04:28 ET (08:28 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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