EU and US reach agreement on data exchange for companies

The European Union and the United States have agreed on a series of changes to the Privacy Shield Agreement. European member states are expected to vote on the implementation of the revised Privacy Shield in early July.

In mid-April, the working group of European privacy regulators announced that there were ‘major flaws’ in the Privacy Shield agreement, although the working group called ‘Article 29’ was positive about most of the agreement. The working group had problems with the commercial part and the part on public safety. The biggest pain point was the ability to collect data from citizens in bulk.

A change in the agreement is, among other things, that the US government better explains when security services from that country collect data in bulk and how the country ensures the security of the data in question. Reuters news agency has recovered a letter in which the director of the US National Security Service describes how the service is collecting information about the activities of a terrorist group in the Middle East that is thought to have targets in Europe.

The service says in that letter that the security services of that country do not collect all the information from the whole world. A new privacy officer would also be set up by the US to handle complaints from EU citizens about espionage. The officer would work independently of the security services.

Privacy Shield should become the successor to the Safe Harbor arrangement, which the European Court of Justice declared invalid in October 2015.