In a much-anticipated decision, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was very straightforward in announcing that it has sided with Austrian law student Max Schrems, agreeing with his argument that the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM mass surveillance program, unveiled by Edward Snowden, makes the European Commission’s finding of U.S. adequacy for personal data transfer with the Safe Harbor mechanism “invalid.” Immediately, the privacy community began to react—including Schrems himself. “Truly, the ECJ could not have been more clear,” IAPP Publications Director Sam Pfeifle writes in this exclusive for The Privacy Advisor, which examines where the ECJ’s ruling leaves other Commission-generated findings for data transfer and what’s next.
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