Such an agreement is necessary for companies likeFacebook FB 3.42% , which transfer consumer and employee data between from Europe to servers in the U.S. Even though such transfers have occurred for years, the legal framework that once allowed this—known as the Safe Harbor rules—dissolved last year when Europe’s top court said the rules didn’t do enough to prevent the U.S. from snooping on Europeans’ data.
Since then, Facebook and other U.S. companies have been using the legal equivalent of duct tape to avoid getting fined by European data regulators. But those temporary solutions are unlikely to hold up, which is why everyone has been crossing their fingers that negotiators will finalize a new arrangement known as the “Privacy Shield.”
And on Friday, the Privacy Shield got a big boost. News leaked out that the gnomes who negotiate these things had hashed out final rules that touched on things like an ombudsman, the surveillance power of U.S. law enforcement and the transfer of data between companies. An expected vote by representatives of EU member states in July will settle it. (Read my colleague David Meyer to get a full account).
So what does all this have to do with Brexit? The answer relates to legal challenges to the new Privacy Shield.
