Safe Harbour illegal! Privacy finally protected! (For EU citisens at least...)

[Cheetah]

Linky: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/fallout-from-eu-us-safe-harbour-ruling-will-be-dramatic-and-far-reaching/

You really should read the article, and Peers' review which it is based on, but here's a short summary:

• Last week's dramatic judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), likely means that transatlantic data transfers made under the Safe Harbour agreement will be ruled illegal across the EU.
• Companies are already finding alternative, if imperfect, ways to transfer personal data from the EU to the US, although a very recent data protection ruling in Germany suggests that one approach—using contracts—is unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny.
• The careful legal reasoning used by the CJEU to reach its decisions will make its rulings extremely hard, if not impossible, to circumvent, since they are based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The CJEU has cleverly ensured that the ruling cannot be overturned simply by bringing in new laws, since those laws must themselves comply with the Charter.
• There’s no real chance to escape what the ruling says by signing new treaties (even the planned TTIP or TISA), by adopting new decisions, or by amending the data protection Directive."
• The CJEU ruled that mass surveillance of the content of communications breaches the essence of the right to privacy and so cannot be justified at all. (Surveillance of content which is targeted on suspected criminal activities or security threats is clearly justifiable, however).
• The CJEU's latest ruling, combined with its earlier bombshell declaration that the EU's data retention directive was "invalid" because of the mass surveillance involved, therefore makes it highly likely that it would regard the UK's spying activities as similarly illegal.

Finally some good news!

And today facebook started to show me a 'Facebook Privacy Basics' guide. It's almost as if I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

[Kozmos]

Now if only TTIP and other behind-closed doors agreements get shot down that'd be great.

 

[Mise]

The easiest way to move forward is for the NSA, GCHQ etc to stop mass surveillance of the internet. It also happens to be the most just way forward. Therefore, the US and UK governments probably won't do it.

 

[Kozmos]

The easiest way to move forward is for the NSA, GCHQ etc to stop mass surveillance of the internet. It also happens to be the most just way forward. Therefore, the US and UK governments probably won't do it.

Why should they? Their capabilities practically double every two years with advance of computing technology. Even if they can't comb all through it (for now) they might as well grab it and extract some general information from the changes. Check out Ars articles on their Equation Group and infiltration into Kaspersky.

 

[Grisu]

A good verdict in theory. How this plays out in practice remains to be seen, I guess.