Caspar did offer a suggestion for USA companies that wish to avoid possible problems in the wake of the CJEU ruling: “Anyone who wants to remain untouched by the legal and political implications of the judgement, should in the future consider storing personal data only on servers within the European Union”.
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Smith said that companies can continue to rely on other European Commission decisions on data transfers at the moment.
On other issues, such as a strengthened role of European data-protection authorities in communicating with the Department of Commerce and in reviewing the functioning of the system, the EU says it has an agreement “in principle”.
The UK’s data watchdog has told schools they do not need to abandon leading internet services despite fears about the legality of continuing to use them.
According to the Conference’s position paper, if DPAs gain knowledge about data transfers to the US that are exclusively based on the Safe Harbor, they will prohibit such data transfers.
Secondly businesses are advised to take stock of their situation.
But the ECJ in early October ruled that Europeans’ data was not adequately protected when transferred to the US, citing USA government surveillance programs and weak laws governing digital privacy. “For a few this will be no easy task”.
“Then look at whether these arrangements are the most appropriate ones taking into account the ICO’s guidance on global transfers”.
But the data regulators confirmed that those transfers can no longer legally be carried out under the current Safe Harbour rules.
Even though the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Vera Jourova, has said that the EU and the U.S. had “agreed in principle” on a new Safe Harbour framework, it is far from clear whether it would survive a legal challenge in the light of the CJEU ruling.
If you prefer not to enable cookies, you may change your browser settings to disable cookies; however, please note that rejecting cookies while visiting the Website may result in certain parts of the Website not operating correctly or as efficiently as if cookies were allowed. This isn’t strictly the case as the judgement is still being analysed on many sides. “Indeed, individuals may be easily induced to give their consent to the transfer of their data to destinations where there is little or no protection when the safe harbour does at least provide them with a few genuine protection even if such protection is imperfect”. An IT man at the council told staff that: “If you still use Dropbox as a quick-win cloud storage solution for your school please consider that recent changes in rulings regarding the validity of the Safe Harbour Agreement means that data stored outside the European Union is now officially at risk for European Union based Data Owners – ie schools in the United Kingdom!”
“This test will be done in particular at the subsidiary companies of Safe Harbor-listed U.S. companies, which have their headquarters in Hamburg and submit their data to the parent company in the USA”, the Hamburg authority said. It does not seem to follow, however, the opinion expressed in the statement of the State Data Protection Authority (Schleswig-Holstein) that data transfers on the basis of Standard Contractual Clauses to the USA are per se prohibited.
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That solution “is within hand”, Pritzker said.
